4 



RESULTS 
OF HIGHER CRITICISM 



AS APPLIED TO THE 



OLD TESTAMENT 



BV 



W. S. CROWE, D.D. 

Author of " Phases of Religion in America," Etc. 

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 

H. W. Thomas, D. D. 



H c if? t 4& 



NEWARK, N. J. 

Printed, by Ward & Tiehenor. 

1894. 



N_ 



Copyright, 1894, 
by W. S. Crowe 



CIS 



To the 
HON. PERRY HANNAH 

THE WISE AND HELPFUL FRIEND 

of my early manhood 



PREFACE 

The aim of this book is merely to sum up the more 
general results at which the critics have arrived in their 
study of the Old Testament, and present those results in 
popular form for busy people. Where authorities disagree, 
those have been followed which pursue the scientific method 
of historical research most consistently. 

The work has been done hurriedly and at intervals, in the 
midst of many other labors, and its defects will be apparent — 
not more apparent, it is hoped, than the purpose to help 
its readers into a clearer religious light and give them a 
deeper confidence in the revelation which God makes to 
the developing moral sense of humanity. 

w. s. c. 

Newark, N. J., November, 1894. 



INTRODUCTION 

Of the many toilers in the field of really constructive and en- 
during religious thought, the Rev. Dr. W. S. Crowe is one of 
the most able, tireless, candid and courageous. Naturally, and 
almost necessarily, much that he says in trying to clear away 
the old errors and prepare the way for the new, the larger 
and better faith of the true, may seem to some destruction ; but 
his effort is not to " destroy, but to fulfil ; " not to take away 
faith, but to free faith from the accretions of error that have 
been and are the prolific sources of unfaith. He has faith in 
the truth ; is not afraid to trust truth to the rational and moral 
consciousness of mankind ; clearly sees the facts of history and 
literature ; gives them as he finds them ; is not the retained 
attorney of a sect, or a school of thought or theology, but the 
fearless advocate of the faith and religion of a world. 

The right of one in a denomination to thus think and write, 
may be questioned by some, and even criticised, but to those who 
would minister most deeply and helpfully to the present needs 
of our transitional and unsettled time, the supreme question in 
all cases must be, not what has been thought to be truth, 
but what is truth. The truth is that which is ; error is that 
which is not. And only the true can stand the test of the ages. 

When, some twenty-five years ago, Bishop Colenso ventured 
to question the historic accuracy of certain statements in the 
Old Testament, the Orthodox churches of England and our own 
country were frightened, fearing that the foundations of faith 
were endangered, or were being hopelessly undermined. But 
such a fear was a poor answer to the facts he presented, and 
the larger-minded Dean Stanley confessed that the difference 
between himself and 'Dr. Colenso, who was on trial for heresy, 
was largely in the fact that the Dean dwelt upon the excellencies 
of the Bible, while the Bishop felt called upon to criticise its 
defects. 

Nor is it difficult to understand why such criticism should 



viii INTRODUCTION. 

have created alarm and disturbance, The Bible had long been 
accepted as the infallible word of God, and all of its sixty-six 
books as equally inspired and authoritative. It was this infalli- 
ble Book that the Protestant church put over against the infalli- 
ble Church of the Catholics, and each accepted its own authority 
as final ; that is, took authority for truth, instead of truth for 
authority. 

Fifty, yes, thirty years ago, belief in the plenary inspiration 
and the inerrant infallibility of the Bible, was just as sacred as 
was belief in the existence and character of God, and in one 
sense more sacred ; for Orthodox theologians did venture to 
discuss the Divine existence and attributes, but they accepted 
everything in the Bible without question. And even now, the 
Presbyterian church is quite free to discuss the peculiar doc- 
trines of Calvin, and to propose a revision of its Creed, but 
when Dr. Briggs and Prof. Smith dared question the old doctrine 
of inspiration and the infallibility of the Bible, these learned 
men were tried for heresy, and expelled from the ministry of 
that church. 

But the questions and facts of the Higher Criticism cannot 
be answered or settled, nor even long delayed, by such eccles- 
iastical decisions. The age of Church authority is happily 
past; henceforth the one question must be, what is true ? And 
the church or the faith that cannot fearlessly brave that ordeal, 
must fall back, must find its place in the rear and not in the 
front ranks of these wonderful years of rational progress. 

Nor is the fear well founded, that the great changes in the 
living thought of our time will work the destruction or even 
do injury to faith. Old forms of faith must change and give 
place to the new, but out of all will come forth the greater and 
better faith of the future. This has been the history of religious 
thought in the past. The new astronomy destroyed faith in 
the old, but the now accepted facts of the Copernican theory 
of the universe have made possible a larger and surer faith than 
was possible to the minds that were so long shut up to the 
false and little geocentric theory of the Ptolemaic views of the 
heavens and the earth. And the same has been true of the 
longer periods of geology that came to dispute the old six- 
day theory of the creation. And the still later doctrine of evo- 



INTRODUCTION. ix 

lution, that at first was opposed as the enemy of faith — is not 
yet welcomed by all — is enlarging the vision, and emphasizing 
the fact of the immanency, the continued presence and near- 
ness of the Divine in the laws of nature and in the reason and 
conscience of man, thence making faith more near and real 
than ever before ; for it is the faith of that which is, and rests 
upon the eternal and progressive order of the Divine, and not 
a faith that tries to rest upon the supposed but unverifiable 
disturbances of that order. The supernatural is coming to be 
seen not as the unnatural, but as the higher natural ; the un- 
natural is disappearing from the world of religion, and in its 
place is coming the surer and larger faith in the higher natural. 

In the light of the evolution of man and religion, the Higher 
Criticism is finding the place and order and progressive 
teaching of the books of the Old Testament, and the result is 
that the Bible is becoming a new book, a wonderful and sacred 
history and literature of the long past ; and none the less sacred 
because it is a history and a literature, and as such reveals the 
progressive life and the imperfections and errors of its time and 
of its generally unknown authors. And it is not strange that 
this higher process should replace the order and dates of many 
books in the Old Testament ; but in the new historical setting 
or arrangement, the real meaning and relevancy of these books 
to the conditions and needs of the times in which they were 
written becomes more, and often most strikingly apparent. 

It is in this that the work of Dr. Crowe has its unique value. 
In the larger works of Prof . Robertson Smith, Drs. Kuenen and 
Driver, and the " Bible for Learners," the same ground has been 
gone over; but in none of these is there the masterly grouping 
of facts, the vivid historic imagination, the originality of 
conception and the practical adaptation to the thought and 
need of the present, that are the marked characteristics and 
charm of these pages by Dr. Crowe. He has accomplished 
the very difficult task of popularizing, and at the same time 
preserving the full strength and dignity of a great and serious 
study, that to other authors is so largely a dry detail of dates 
and the growth and use of words. These are essentials in the 
science of the Higher Criticism ; nor are they wanting in this 
most excellent work, but in their powerful and artistic presenta- 



x INTRODUCTION. 

tion they have the freshness and interest of a history of a near 
yesterday, and make one feel that he is living in the great reali- 
ties of the long ago. 

Nor is this all : the study of these pages will lead to the 
new study of the Bible, and to a wiser appreciation and pro- 
founder realization of its great spiritual truths as revealed in 
the unfolding religious consciousness of the world. 

H. W. Thomas. 



CONTENTS 

Chapter I 

Back to the Beginning ; page 

Epochs in the history and development of the Bible — 
the earliest writing — the original literature — hero stories, 
legends and myths i 

Chapter II 

Early Hebrew History : 

Primitive traditions — historic outlines — literature de- 
pendent on history — the tribal period — Hebrew ignorance 
of Egypt — the literature of the tribal period — " Jacob's 
Blessing " and " The Covenant." 1 1 

Chapter III 

The National Period; 

How the tribes became a nation — Saul, the giant — David, 
not the psalmist — intellectual development in time of war 
— Solomon, the unwise — his weakness as a statesman — the 
squandering of energy in untimely architecture — the na- 
tion's crisis — the failure — political degeneracy — religion 
and literature of the national period — the beginning of the 
priesthood — " The Wars of the Lord " and " The Book of 
Jasher" — religious development — characteristics of the 
ancient nations 1 8 

Chapter IV 
Israel and Judah ; 

The new ideal — the people's conception of "manifest 
destiny" — prophets and prophecy— what prophecy is not 
and what it is — theological prophets — the epoch of reform 
— how a new moral sense creates literary activity — the 
great eighth century B. C. — Amos, Hosea, the First Isaiah, 
Micah — false readings — drama, the song of Solomon — 
wisdom literature — the first collection of Proverbs— poetry 
— the two Decalogues— the Hexateuch — double authorship 
— the prophet historian — other histories 33 



xii CONTENTS. 

Chapter V 
Judah : page 

The destruction of Israel — last of the great ethical 
prophets — sudden development of the Jewish priesthood — 
centralization of ecclesiastical power under Hezekiah — 
Josiah's great stratagem for unifying the church — the book 
of Deuteronomy — the occasion of other books, Zephaniah, 
Nahum — second collection of Proverbs — Jeremiah, the 
priest-prophet — conflicting theories of providence, the old 
prophetic theory, the new priestly theory, the theory of the 
book of Job 65 

Chapter VI 

In Captivity : 

Difference between heathen and Christian treatment of 
the religion of conquered peoples — the priests of the exile 
as organizers— what became of the Ten Tribes — the adop- 
tion of ceremonial exclusiveness — The Law of holiness as 
a political measure — a fragment of Zechariah — Ezekiel, the 
Startling — Lamentations — " The Suffering Servant " — a few 
psalms— Obadiah — Judges — Samuel — Kings— a shout of 
triumph— Cyrus, the Deliverer — three reasons for his kind- 
ness to the Jews 79 

Chapter VII 
The Home-Coming: 

Conditions of the return — literature of the return, frag- 
ments of Isaiah, part of Zechariah, Haggai, Joel — the 
sufferer's pride — who and what the Samaritans were 92 

Chapter VIII 
The Law : 

The spirit and the work of the Jews who remained in 
Babylon — the literary creation of The Tabernacle for a 
priestly purpose — the practice of dating books backward 
and claiming fictitious authorship — Ezra in Jerusalem — his 
cruel but necessary decree against intermarriage with 
heathen — Nehemiah in Jerusalem — his promulgation of the 
so-called Law of Moses — the writing of various books into 
a pentateuch — memoirs of Ezra and Nehemiah — Malachi — 



CONTENTS. xlil 

PAGE 
Novels, Ruth and Jonah, against priestly assumption — the 
conservative era — Chronicles — Psalms, the hymn-book of 
the rejuvenated second temple 96 

Chapter IX 
Greek Influence: 

Growing intelligence and decaying morality — Esther and 
Ecclesiastes 115 

Chapter X 

The Jewish Reformation : 

A sketch of Jewish history from 332 B. C. to 160 B. C — 
the heathenizing of Judaism — the new patriotism — Judas 
Maccabaeus — the book of Daniel — the excuse for literary 
forgery — recapitulation of the dates of Old Testament 
writings 1 20 

Chapter XI 
The Critics: 

In Scotland, Lord Gifford's contribution to theological 
progress— in England, the liberalism of conservative Oxford 
— the work of Dr. Briggs and Dr. Salmond — in Holland 
and Germany, Kuenen and Wellhausen — in America, tardy 
but at last awake — the purpose of the'critics ... 131 

Chapter XII 
Incidental Results : 

Incidental results always greater than direct results — a 
consideration of traditional theories about the Bible ; the 
"all or none" theory; the "one book" theory; the 
" miraculous revelation " theory ; the " miraculous proph- 
ecy "theory; the "miraculous history" theory — the new 
appreciation of the Bible — its sublime power of moral con- 
viction — the true idea of revelation ; the vision accorded 
to the moral sense— the difference between a necessary 
evil and the eternal right — inspiration — providence — the 
issue — the tyranny of texts — the ground of hatred and 
persecution — what Higher Criticism is good for 141 



BACK TO THE BEGINNING. 



CHAPTER L 



Back to the Beginning. 

We shall need to go about our work as geologists do — passing 
down through stratum after stratum until we reach the primi- 
tive rock. A child, looking out upon the world, imagines that 
it came from the Creator's hand just as it is now. The seas 
and mountains and rivers, and even the forests, he supposes, 
are just as God spake them into being. With a very little 
knowledge the child comes to understand that our forests — all 
forests— are a modern growth. When he studies back to the 
glacial period, he finds that our rivers and lakes are things of 
comparatively recent origin. When he gets a little deeper 
into this great book of the rocks, he finds that our continents 
and oceans are not the original continents and oceans. Conti- 
nents have been thrown up and worn away, oceans have been 
ploughed out and filled, their forms and locations many times 
changed. The heights of our highest hills have been at the 
bottom of the sea. Going still further back, the student comes 
upon a time, before there were any mountains or any seas, when 
the earth was a mass of molten stuffs, like a great fiery paste. 
We may pause here and call that the original earth. 

Looking upon the Bible, children and grown children imagine 
that it came from the hand of God in its present shape. They 
suppose that its various books, divided into chapters and 
verses, with headings and punctuation marks, printed in the 
English language ; the books set in the order and dated and 
authors given, as we now have them, and bound in a single 
volume — that this Bible which we handle is the original Bible. 
Now, let us dig down through the history of this great old book 
and see what we find along the way and what we have left for 
a beginning. 

A good reference book, for these particular facts, is the Rev. 



2 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

John W. Chadwick's " Bible of To-Day. " Mr. Chadwick's well- 
known scholarship, if no other authority were at hand, would 
relieve my hesitancy in making the following statements. 

The Bible, as we now have it, is only 232 years old. The 
dates of many of the books were put on by Archbishop Usher, 
in the year 1660. That is our first halting place. There has 
never been a hotter controversy than has raged about the 
question of dates. Men have struggled for Usher's dates, as if 
Paul and Isaiah and Moses themselves had put on the figures. 
Usher's chronology is little better than a pious guess-work. 

We travel back forty-nine years farther to another halting 
place. The year is 161 1. The fact is our authorized version. 
The spirit of the enterprise is James I. of England. Under the 
direction of James the bishops put on these chapter headings 
and these running titles of the margins. Turn, for instance, to 
chapter xlix. of Isaiah and read this heading : " Christ, being 
sent to the Jews, complaineth of them. He is sent to the Gen- 
tiles with gracious promises." Look at the top of the page and 
see this running title : " Christ sent to the Gentiles," and on 
the next page : " An exhortation to trust in Christ." For 
these 281 years the children and grown children of Protestant 
Christendom have read those headings and titles and have con- 
sidered them a part of the Bible : if not original, at least as 
containing the original import and meaning of Isaiah. We 
should not be much farther from the truth if we Americans 
should make a new authorized version and should put a head- 
ing to Isaiah xlix. on this wise : "Washington, being sent to the 
English, complaineth of them. He is sent to the Americans 
with gracious promises." Read the third verse of that chapter 
and you will see what Isaiah means. Jehovah is made to say : 
•' Thou art my servant, O Israel (the nation of Israel), in 
whom I will be glorified." " Israel " does not mean " Christ " 
any more than it means " Washington." For 281 years the 
children have read these headings and supposed they were an 
explanation of the chapters. It is a great advantage to get 
back of them and read the Bible without their absurd com- 
mentary. 

Now, let us go back sixty years further to another halting 
station. The year is 1 551. The genius is Robert Stephens (or 



BACK TO THE BEGINNING. 3 

Estienne, as is the name in French), a printer of Paris, a rigid 
Calvinist. The momentous fact is the printing of the Bible, 
or part of it, with the present division of chapters and verses. 
" This division into verses," says Chadwick, " has been a fruit- 
ful source of textual polemics, resulting in bad blood and worse 
theology." 

Another short journey takes us back to the fourteenth cen- 
tury, when people began to say " The Bible." The simple fact 
that we call this collection of books " The Bible," as if it were 
one book, and not a collection of books, is a very important 
fact ; a fact that has been fruitful of misunderstanding. We 
naturally think of one book as having one author, or one 
directing genius. When children understand that between the 
first and last writing intervened a thousand years they know, 
of course, that one man was not the author ; but if it is one 
book it must somehow have been the work of one mind. 
Simply because we call it The Bible, children conclude that all 
its parts must agree — that a continuous meaning runs all through 
it — that its purposes and doctrines must have unity of design. 

Prior to the fourteenth century it was not called The Bible. 
It was not thought of as one book. They did not, say Ton Bib- 
lion, but Ta Biblia — the books. And prior to the fifth century 
these were not called books at all, but writings — Hebrew and 
Christian writings. It makes a vast difference to the average 
man whether he is reading The Bible or whether he is reading- 
Hebrew and Christian writings. Turn your thoughts inward 
to your own childish conception of things, and you will see 
what I mean. 

Another important date — one of the most important in 
relation to the Hebrew writings, may be set down approximately 
as the year 600. The interesting fact in that connection is what 
scholars know as the Massora. What is the Massora ? The 
word means tradition. What does the tradition refer to ? To 
the pronunciation, punctuation and vowels of Hebrew writing. 
Hebrew writing, before the time of which I speak, about 600 
A. D., had no punctuation marks and no vowels. Its alphabet 
consisted of nothing but consonants. It had no capital letters 
and no word spaces. 

Suppose you try the experiment of writing a few sentences 



4, RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

without vowels, without word spaces, without capitals and with- 
out punctuations — just placing the consonants of the words, 
one after the other, the same space between each two letters, 
until you fill a page. Do you think anybody could read it ? 
Well, that is all that Hebrew writing for fifteen centuries 
afforded. Take such a sentence as " God is love." It would be 
written "gdslv." If you had simply those consonants you 
would be at a great loss what to make of them. You might 
put in one set of vowels and it would read, " aged slave." 
With other vowels it will read " good salve." You can readily 
see that an entire book written thus, of solid consonants, would 
be capable of more interpretations than a party platform or a 
candidate's letter of acceptance. 

How did the Hebrews keep the pronunciation and the 
division into sentences at all ? Simply by reading aloud and 
practically committing, from generation to generation. Punc- 
tuation is a very important thing. You recall the old story of 
that member of Commons who had accused another member of 
lying. A resolution was passed obliging him to make public 
apology ; which he did in this wise : " I said the gentleman 
lied, it is true; and I am sorry for it." But when the apology 
appeared next morning, in print, the comma after the word 
lied had been changed to a period, and the following letter duly 
capitalized. Then it was no apology : " I said the gentleman 
lied. It is true ; and I am sorry for it." 

When the entire meaning of books was carried along thus 
for a thousand or fifteen hundred years in the memory, you can 
seethe liability to mistake. That memory, "tradition," Mas- 
sora, was written into the Bible about the year 600. 

The most important word in the Hebrew language — their 
name for God — is still in dispute. It was written j h v h. 
Through motives of reverence it was seldom pronounced, 
and the pronunciation was lost. Whether it should be Jehovah, 
Jahaveh or Jahveh, is still an unsettled problem. Most schol- 
ars incline to the last spelling. 

You see that a Bible of the olden time did not look much 
like ours. Of course it was not printed or bound. It was a 
collection of parchment rolls. In very ancient times the 
writing was on ox-hides. The surface of the leather was 



BACK TO THE BEGINNING. 5 

scratched with an iron stylus and ink was let into the scraches. 
The book of Isaiah, for instance, written on half a dozen ox- 
hides, those hides tied together with thongs, would make a 
roll, like a roll of hall-carpet, five feet long, and the size of a 
man's body. There were no running titles, no chapter head- 
ings, no division into chapters or verses, no spacing between 
words, no capital letters, no punctuation marks and no vowels. 

In all the world there were but a few copies of any book. 
Those copies were kept in the temple and the synagogues. 
Few people read them. The priests re-wrote them as the old 
hides became worn or musty, and we shall never know how 
much of the original was left out, changed, or what additions 
were made in the course of so many centuries. 

Now, as we travel back from the Massoretic period, let us see 
what we lose on the way. 

Of course, when we reach the time of Christ, we have lost 
the entire New Testament. 

We go back to the beginning of the Maccabsen war — 1 66 
B. C. — and the entire Apocrypha, Daniel, a few Psalms, have 
dropped out. 

We go back to the conquest of Palestine by Alexander — 332 
B. C. — and Ecclesiastes, Esther, Chronicles, more Psalms, have 
dropped out. 

We go back to the advent of Ezra — 458 B. C. — and Ruth, 
Jonah, Ezra, Nehemiah, Malachi, one-third of the Proverbs, 
the great body of the Psalms, have dropped out. 

We go back to the destruction of Jerusalem — 586 B. C. — and 
Joel, Haggai, Obadiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, First and Second 
Kings. First and Second Samuel, Judges, Leviticus, about half 
of Genesis and Exodus and Numbers and Joshua, large portions 
of Jeremiah and Zechariah and Isaiah, some of the few remain- 
ing Psalms, have dropped out. 

We go back to the deportation of the Ten Tribes— 721 B. C. 
— and the remainder of Jeremiah, more Psalms, Job, Nahum, 
Zephaniah, another third of Proverbs, Deuteronomy, Micah, 
other portions of Isaiah, have dropped out. 

What of our Bible did Israel (Ten Tribes) ever see ? Hosea, 
Amos, Song of Solomon, about half of Isaiah, one-third of 
Proverbs, a few chapters of Zechariah, the story parts of Gen- 



6 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITG1SM. 

esis and Exodus and Numbers and Joshua, the Decalogue, Ja- 
cob's Blessing, and the Covenant ; and all of these, except the 
last three, were new ; the oldest of them not having been writ- 
ten more than fifty years when Israel was destroyed by the 
Assyrians. 

When we get back to 800 B. C, there was probably nothing, 
as it stands in our Bible to-day, except the Decalogue, the 
Covenant, and Jacob's Blessing — five short chapters. You 
must remember that 800 B. C, for any of the Mediterranean 
nations outside of Egypt, is a very ancient date. That was 
twenty-four years before the first Great Olympiad in Greece, 
which was held in 776, and is the oldest reliable date in Greek 
history. It was forty-seven years before the reputed founding 
of the city of Rome, which, according to the Roman historian, 
Varro, took place in the year 753 B. C. All that ancient his- 
tory of Rome, however, is lost in the impenetrable fog of tradi- 
tion. 

When we ask a date for any writing of the Mediterranean 
world, outside of Egypt, prior to 800 B. C, we are making a 
heavy demand. Herodotus claims that Homer himself was not 
more than fifty years earlier, but that date must be greatly 
revised. Dr. William Smith inclines to the idea that Homer 
composed his poems very near the time of the first Great 
Olympiad. Mahaffy is disposed to bring Homer down almost 
to the year 700. 

Did the pre-Homeric poets and story-tellers write, or simply 
compose and recite their works ? That is a still graver 
question. What I have said about ancient Hebrew writing 
applies almost entirely to ancient Greek. It was without 
spaces and punctuations. Very little, indeed, was written. 
It was composed and recited. The Greeks actually became 
a literary people before they had books. Poems, legends, 
stories of great men and great events were put in form 
and recited until multitudes committed them. In the olden 
times there were professional reciters — Rhapsodists, they weie 
called — who traveled from city to city and from village to 
village, reciting the compositions of the bards in temples 
or in the markets or on the public squares— wherever a 
crowd of listeners would gather. That was the ancient cir- 



BACK TO THE BEGINNING. 7 

culating library. Parchments were few and expensive. Not 
one person in ten thousand could write or read, but they could 
all listen and remember. At the Olympiads the great authors 
first recited their own productions. The professional reciters 
committed the poem or story, and then went over the land 
popularizing the new composition. 

Now, we must understand, once for all, that the ancient 
Hebrew literature was produced and popularized in the same 
way. Psalms, historic stories, dramas, legends, prophetic utter- 
ances were composed and recited. After a while this and that 
great composition were written and the writing kept in the 
temple, just as Greek poems were finally written out and pre- 
served in the temple at Oiympia. The Hebrews, like the 
Greeks, had a considerable literature in memory while yet 
they had almost no writing, and while the little writing they 
had served only to corect the memory of the priests and 
rhapsodists. 

When you get back to the year 800 B. C, you are practically 
at the beginning of written literature, for the Mediteranean 
world, outside of Egypt. It may possibly be that among the 
Hebrews a few scraps were written earlier. Many scholars 
incline to the idea that the Ten Commandments, in some prim- 
itive form, that The Covenant which we have in Exodus xxi., 
xxii., and up to the nineteenth verse of xxiii. ; and that Jacob's 
Blessing, which we have in Genesis xiix., were written much 
earlier. Other scholars are in serious doubt of it. That these 
old fragments, and much besides, were composed and recited 
and well known long before the date 800 B. C, there is no 
doubt. 

Now, if we can, let us get at the meaning of that " much 
besides. ' To put it plainly, what literature did the Hebrews 
have, in memory, before 800 B. C. ? That is what I mean by 
their original literature. 

What kind of a literature do people, who do not read, carry 
along in their memories ? Statistics ? No. Scientific treat- 
ises? No. Careful historic accounts with verified facts and 
dates ? No. Philosophical works ? No. Anything of the 
nature of a plain prose statement ? No. They carry along the 
kind of literature that is easy to remember. What is easy to 



8 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

remember? Stories, songs, proverbs, legends, myths. Well, 
these are the things that every original literature consists of. 
Go down among the negroes and the poor whites of the South 
and you will find more proverbs and quaint sayings, ten times 
over, than you or I ever found use for. Go into the interior 
districts of Ireland or Germany, and you will find more hob- 
goblin stories, more fairy and brownie and spook literature, than 
you ever read in books. Fiske and Baring-Gould and others 
have rendered the cultured world a great service in gathering 
up these myths, this curious folk-lore, from the country sides, 
and giving the mass of it in book-form. Schoolcraft and Long- 
fellow did a great service in gathering up the myths and 
legends of the American Indians. Hiawatha is simply their 
memory literature put in cultured form. William Black and 
G. W. Cable, in their stories of Southern life, have done much 
of the same for the negroes and Creoles. Walter Scott did the 
same in " Rob Roy " and " Lady of the Lake," for Scotland. 
Chaucer did the same, in " Canterbury Tales," for primitive 
England. Boccaccio did the same, for the baser kind of stuff, 
in old Italian life. " The Lives of the Saints," so beloved in 
the Catholic church, is the same kind of a gathering up of 
exaggerated religious stories, as those stories floated down the 
ages of ignorance. " The Arabian Nights " is but a collection 
of these ancient, popular stories. The poems of Homer him- 
self, in the main, are nothing more nor different. Get Bul- 
finch's "Age of Fable," and you have the Homeric stories 
resolved back into their primitive form. 

Proverbs, "sayings," songs like those of Moses and Miriam 
and Deborah, the sun myth like that put into the form of the 
Samson story — such things were easily remembered. The Ten 
Commands and the famous traditions about the tables of stone 
on which they were written, the covenant and Jacob's bles- 
sing — these are religious things which a primitive people keep 
well in mind. 

Now, for the old Hebrew, unwritten history. If you will take 
up the historic books of the Old Testament, and read them 
with this key in your thoughts, their pages are unlocked. You 
will immediately appreciate that they consist of a series of 
short, popular, wonder-stories of the old heroes. Just such 



BACK TO THE BEGINNING. 9 

stories as you have in Homer, with a germ foundation in fact, 
but which have grown from age to age until every story con- 
tains a wonder, a miracle. It is the miracle in it which makes 
it easy for the common people to remember. 

Suppose we had no written literature, no books, how do you 
think we should preserve the main facts of our American his- 
tory ? We could not remember the thousands of names of all 
the governors and generals and poets and story-tellers and 
teachers and financiers. We should do just as people always 
did. We should remember the names of the great heroes, and 
we should give them credit for everything their generation 
accomplished. All that a colony did in forty years, all that an 
army did in ten years, we should attribute to one man ; and, of 
course, we should make him a miraculous man to do so much. 

Out of the primeval age would loom one great figure — 
Columbus — and we should give him credit for everything that 
Amerigo and the Cabots and Magellan and Cortes and Pizarro, 
and fifty other discoverers and conquerors, brought to pass. 
We should make him live a hundred years. We should give 
him magic ships and a power of quelling storms and slaying 
multitudes with his god-like word. Miles Standish, perhaps, 
would be the only New Englander of half a century that we 
would recall. We should have him crossing the ocean on dry 
land, with sun and moon standing still while he slaughtered 
more Indians. George Washington's hatchet would have 
grown to a hammer of Thor with which he knocked down half 
the primeval forest of Virginia and slew the English army sin- 
gle-handed. All the good stories of these four centuries would 
be attributed to Lincoln, just as all the Hebrew proverbs of ten 
centuries were attributed to Solomon. All the songs and 
hymns of our hundreds of writers would be credited to Long- 
fellow, perhaps, just as all the Psalms are sometimes called 
David's. 

In this way the Hebrews kept the simple facts of their his- 
tory — imbedded in the wonder and childish charm of hero- 
stories. The Hebrews escaped from Egypt, where they had 
been slaves. How, the later generations quite forgot. One 
great name they remembered — the name of Moses. Every- 



lO BESTTLTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

thing was attributed to him. Wonder-stories were woven about 
him — his birth, the burning bush, his Ten Commands received 
from God on Sinai, his strange death, his active life of 120 
years. Then we have the stories of Joshua, Gideon, Jephthah, 
Deborah, Samuel, Saul, David, Solomon — hero-stories, every 
one, in which the work of an entire people for one or two 
generations is attributed to the hero. Imagination had full 
play. Legend and myth were woven into the narrative and 
dates forgotten. The wonder, the miracle, in every case, helped 
the people to remember the simple historic fact at the heart of 
the story. Canaan was conquered, the tribes were consolidated 
into a nation, the temple was built, the Ten Commands were 
composed. The toilsome history of these events has been lost 
and the events are floated down to us in their clouds of tra- 
dition. 



EARLY HEBREW HISTORY. 11 



CHAPTER II. 
Early Hebrew History. 

Hebrew history begins with the exodus from Egypt. Back 
of that is obscure and irresponsible tradition. The date of the 
exodus must be brought forward nearly two centuries. The 
best authorities place it about 1320 B.C. What is commonly 
called the " forty years in the wilderness " is a literary produc- 
tion rather than an authentic account. Whether the forty years 
have not dwindled to less than three is a grave question. The 
story of the conquest of Canaan is also, in very large degree, 
literary. Authentic history finds the Israelite tribes in Canaan ; 
finds that they had come from Egyptian slavery ; finds that 
their remote ancestors had probably been Canaanites. That is 
about all that the scholars have found concerning the origin of 
the Hebrew people. 

The first period of Hebrew history extends from the exodus, 
1 320, to the beginning of national unity under Saul ; or to the 
beginning of Saul's wars, which culminated in national unity ; 
to which the date of 1100 B.C. would not be far out of the 
way. These two hundred and twenty years constitute the 
tribal period. Very little is known of the detailed history of 
that time. The scanty sources of knowledge are sufficient, 
however, to give a tolerably clear outline of the beliefs and 
customs of that primitive age. 

The second period of the history includes those stirring 
events of conquest, and king-making, and nation-building, and 
temple-building, from the beginning of Saul's career to the 
division of Solomon's kingdom — about 975 B. C. Politically 
speaking, this was the great age, though it ended in decadence. 

The third period covers the time of the two kindgoms, 
"Israel" and "Judah," from 975 to 721 B.C., when "Israel" 
was destroyed, and a large portion of the " Ten Tribes " carried 



12 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. ' 

away by the Assyrians. « In a peculiar and empathic sense this 
was the age of the prophets. Its beginning coincides with the 
most powerful religious development of the Hebrews. The 
latter half of it was also their golden age of literature. 

The fourth period embraces the separate existence of Judah, 
from 721 to 586 B. C, when Jerusalem was thrown down and 
the chief people were taken in his captive train to Babylonia 
by Nebuchadnezzar. During this period the prophet's voice 
became half priestly, and the priesthood was steadily growing 
in organized ability. 

The fifth period comprises the fifty years of captivity, from 
the great deportation in 586, to the "return" under Zerubbabel, 
in 536 B. C. This was an age of change, political, philosophical, 
social and religious. With their new government, (of priests), 
their new theology and new ideas of life, they were a very 
different people from what they had ever been before. All of 
their own history prior to the captivity was now ancient history. 

The sixth period reaches into the time of Greek influence 
which followed the conquest of Palestine by Alexander in 332 
B. C. This is the priest period, the period of theological law- 
making and of history-writing with a purpose. The character- 
istics of this age were carried back and stamped upon the annals 
of all the previous ages. Our common ideas of the older periods 
are true of this age alone. 

The seventh period reaches down to the wars of the Macca- 
bees, the glory of whose revolt for religious independence may 
be roundly dated at 165 B. C. We may pause here, for here Old 
Testament writing pauses, and the only purpose in studying the 
history is to establish a basis for studying Hebrew literature. 

The literature of every nation is based on that nation's his- 
tory. Every great literary period is the out-flowering of some 
great political change. If we are unacquainted with the polit- 
ical events, the literature is meaningless. To one who knew 
nothing of American history, Barbara Frietchie would tell 
nothing. The Old Testament has long been an enigma, be- 
cause it was dissociated from the political events of the Heb- 
rews. It will have a rational meaning and will be clearly 
understood when we see how every page of it is rooted in the 
brave little nation's experience. 



EARLY HEBREW HISTORY. 13 

The Tribal Period. 

Higher Criticism finds the Hebrews in their tribal barbarism, 
battling with the Canaanites for a foothold in what they be- 
lieved to be the land of their forefathers. These Hebrew 
tribes of Canaan lived in tents, or very primitive huts ; they 
had no civil laws or central government ; the clans gathered in 
villages, as the American Indians did, and the chiefs were their 
arbitrary rulers. They had learned something of handicraft 
while they were slaves in Egypt, but they had learned almost 
nothing about Egyptian civilization. The history, the litera- 
ture, the fine arts, the philosophy, the social culture of Egypt, 
they knew practically nothing about. There is not the faintest 
probability that any Hebrew who came out of Egypt could 
write or read, either the Egyptian language or any other. 

Let us imagine that a company of slaves from the plantations 
of Florida escaped from their masters in the year i860, and 
found their way to some savage land, where they should in 
time work out a civilization of their own. You can easily un- 
derstand that such people going out from our country would 
not carry any appreciable knowledge of our philosophy, our 
science, our inventions, our literature, our social customs. 
While among us they had known practically nothing about 
these things. Thousands of Southern slaves never were five 
miles from the plantation, never saw a great public building, 
never heard tell of American literature, knew nothing about 
the inventions, the history, the fine arts, or the social life of the 
whites. Wherever they went and whatever their descendants 
afterward became, their future literature would contain nothing 
of value concerning us. 

The doctrine of immortality was as familiar to the Egyptians 
of that day as it is to us. It is impossible that the Hebrews 
could have learned it, for it is not possible that a people should 
forget that doctrine, and the Hebrews afterward knew nothing 
of it. During the tribal period Hebrew thought of the future 
was not as well developed as the earliest missionaries found it 
among the American Indians. As late as the time of Saul 
there was no belief in the future that appealed to heart or hope 
or moral sense. There was nothing more nor better than the 
simplest and most child-like fear of ghosts. There was no 



14 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

conception of future rewards or punishments, no dreams of 
Heaven or progress. 

The Egyptians of that old time had an elaborate theology, 
with a noble conception of the spirituality of the gods ; but in 
the tribal period the Hebrew thought of spirituality is scarcely 
higher than may be ascribed to fetishism. Their god was 
simply the " guardian angel " of the tribes. They connected 
his presence with certain stones. What size or shape or kind 
of stone we do not know, but they had preserved the tradition 
that the patriarchs worshiped the gods whose presence was in 
these stones. The stone itself was called " The House of 
Jahveh." The tribes carried with them an "ark" or box 
which contained one of these stones. In that stone dwelt their 
god. If they would have his help in battle, they must carry 
the stone with them. When it was captured by the enemy 
they "mourned after their god." 

As an indication of the moral status of the tribal period, it 
is sufficient to recall the habit of offering human sacrifices in 
their worship of Jahveh. Jephthah burned his daughter, and 
Samuel consumed Agag, a prisoner, on the altars of the Lord. 
The Hebrews were then on a moral plane with the Mexicans of 
Montezuma's time, and with the ancient Druids of England. 



The Literature of the Tribal Period. 

Of course the Hebrews did not exist as tribes during their 
slavery in Egypt. In their wanderings and fightings, on the 
way to Caanan, it was natural that certain men of superior 
courage and ability should come to the front as the chiefs of 
clans. When they finally entered Canaan they fought it out 
among themselves as to which should have the best locations. 
This lets us into the secret of what is, perhaps, the oldest 
literary production of the Israelites. That production, not 
written of course, but widely committed, was finally embodied 
in the book of Genesis— our xlixth chapter — and was from 
the beginning known as Jacob's Blessing. The connection be- 
tween the history of the clans and this bit of literature is very 
simple. It so happened that there were twelve tribes. In the 



EARLY HEBREW HISTORY. 15 

course of five or six generations, in which facts were forgotten 
and replaced by traditions, these tribes had found their loca- 
tions in various parts of the half-conquered country, and had 
made their reputations, as fighters, or cowards, or wanderers, 
or men of peace, &c. Some had good locations and were suc- 
cessful. Some had poor locations and were weak. 

Always and everywhere people like to feel that what has 
come to pass was foreordained. The tribes which had good 
places were proud to think it had been thus decreed for them. 
To the tribes which had poor places it was a comfort to feel 
that the unpleasant fact had been decreed. They would rather 
believe that some old doom had descended upon them than 
simply to confess that their fathers had been whipped by their 
uncles. 

Some shrewd fellow among them was able to meet this 
necessity. In all barbarous times the blessing or cursing of a 
dying chief was supposed to carry magic power for many gen- 
erations. There were twelve tribes. These twelve tribes, in 
one way and another, had come to be called by name. Whether 
their names came from persons or from circumstances it is 
difficult to tell. Our author went back to the old tra- 
dition of the time when the forefathers had lived in Ca- 
naan, before the slavery. He said there was a great old 
patriarch who had twelve sons, and these were really the fathers 
of the twelve tribes. To these twelve imaginary brothers he 
gave the names of the twelve tribes. When he was dying the 
old patriarch pronounced a prophetic blessing — most of it is 
cursing, however — on the twelve sons. Read it. Genesis xlix. 
It is a cunning piece of work, with a genuine literary instinct. 
The character which the author makes old Jacob give to each 
of the sons tallies quite remarkably with the circumstances of 
the tribe which bore that name at the author's time. This 
composition became immediately popular because it explained 
(?) to all the ignorant masses why their tribe had been for- 
tunate or unfortunate. 

Now let us take up the other bit of very ancient literature. 
Of course, in those slowly progressive generations after the 
exodus, the Israelites would naturally work out something of a 
legal code for themselves. That would be a very gradual work, 



1 6 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

as it must be with a primitive people. Year after year and 
generation after generation the chiefs and the wise old men 
would get together and settle certain matters of property right, 
certain matters of marriage and family right, certain matters of 
religious and ceremonial rite. That code of primitive and 
peculiar laws, as it was finally rounded up, you will find em- 
bodied in the book of Exodus, chapters xxi., xxii., and to the 
nineteenth verse of chapter xxiii. It was called in ancient 
times The Covenant, because these were the laws which the 
chiefs covenanted with each other to enforce. That code recog- 
nizes slavery, and polygamy, and the selling of children, and 
personal revenge, even to the taking of life. Such were the 
moral standards of that barbarian time. The intellectual stan- 
dard was such that this primitive code provides for the criminal 
punishment of animals. You will find in this code also the real 
old barbarian hospitality and generosity. If any should take 
a poor man's coat for security of debt he should return it 
before dark, for it is the poor man's covering. You will find in 
this primitive code the establishment of the seventh day of the 
week as a day of rest. That is all they provided for ; simply 
a day of rest. There was no .dream of a Sabbath of worship. 
You will find also the establishment of the feast of unleavened 
bread in memory of their release from Egyptian slavery. It is 
not called the feast of Passover. The story of how an angel 
" passed over " and slew the first born of the Egyptians had not 
yet been invented. 

No man can read that old code of laws intelligently without 
feeling that he is far back toward the beginning of organized 
society. These laws deal with such petty questions as only 
the clansmen of a primitive age have not outgrown. If a father 
finds himself financially embarrassed, and sells his daughter 
with the purpose of paying his debts, shall that daughter, pur- 
chased by another Israelite, be kept as a house slave, or may 
she be sent into the field to toil with the men slaves and the 
women slaves that were bought or captured of the heathen ? 
A very nice point in jurisprudence ; but those old chieftains 
agreed among themselves that their daughters thus sold into 
slavery should not be sent to the field. If an ox should form 
the habit of goring people with his horns, what should be done 



EARLY HEBREW HISTORY. 17 

with that wicked ox? Should he be tied up, or killed, or 
should they make an example of him ? These primitive law- 
makers concluded that a wicked ox ought to be punished the 
same as a wicked man. He should be pounded to death with 
stones as a solemn warning to all other wicked oxen. Even 
after death his character should be stigmatized. His flesh 
should not be eaten by men. It should be thrown out as car- 
rion. They supposed that final disgrace— that men should not 
eat him — would have had a very moral effect on other oxen. 
You see that we are dealing with a people who are yet not only 
in their moral but in their intellectual childhood. 

This code of laws was completed before the time of Saul. It 
says nothing about a king, and nothing about a temple, and 
nothing about a priesthood. The priesthood, which long after- 
ward was fabled to have begun with Aaron, was not yet estab- 
lished. These laws proclaim capital punishment for the wor- 
ship of any other god than Jahveh. Of course they believed 
in the existence of other gods, but Jahveh was their god and 
him only should they worship. 



18 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 



CHAPTER III. 



The National Period. 

Now let us address ourselves to the question : How did 
those barbarian tribes ever come to be a nation ? We read the 
surface storv of how it was done in the book of Samuel. We 
are told that the people with one accord rose up and asked for 
a king, and that Samuel laid the matter before their god, 
Jahveh, and that Jahveh relunctantly and jealously and ironi- 
cally granted their request and sent Samuel out to find and 
anoint a king. That would be very simple, indeed, if the great 
events of history ever happened in that way — but they don't. 
These thirteen American colonies did not come to be the 
United States in any such easy and simple way as that. The 
Netherland States did not come to be a Dutch Republic in any 
such easy and simple fashion. The old Feudal States did not 
round into the modern empires of Europe in any such gentle 
and quiet way. Oh, no. It required mighty revolutions and 
prolonged wars, and generations of sacrifice and conquest and 
destruction and study, to bring these nations out of the former 
chaos. If there is one thing above another that no people on 
the face of the earth ever did willingly, ever did until they 
were compelled by the most awful necessities to do it, that 
thing is to form a centralized government. To build a nation 
means that every independent chieftain shall give up his 
power, that every tribe or clan or feudal state must surrender 
its inherited rights, that every fortressed and armed company 
of traders shall yield its special privilege, that every aristocratic 
prince shall forego the ancestral glory of his house, that every 
pirate fleet and every robber band shall come into subjection, 
that every ambitious man shall renounce the honors and the 
glory he has already won and meekly take his chances of pro- 
motion in the new regime. We are too well acquainted with 
human nature Men do not willingly make these surrenders 



THE NATIONAL PERIOD. 19 

of personal power. Any set of men that could do so would be 
a set of stupids, altogether too weak to form a nation, or keep 
it alive when once formed. Only that kind of men who struggle 
to the death for their personal privileges, right or wrong, are 
the men who have stuff in them to build a nation of. Your 
gentle and trusting men who go to an old soothsayer, and say, 
" Give us a king to rule over us," are not the kind of men that 
future centuries ever hear tell of. 

How did the Israelite tribes become a nation ? Just as every 
other set of states or tribes or clans or colonies became a 
nation. Every nation on earth had its origin in some awful 
war for existence. Some great enemy came from without, and 
the little states must unite or be separately crushed. It was 
England that made our nation. It was Spain that made the 
Dutch Republic. It was the marvelous Mohammedan empire 
that lifted Spain and the other European kingdoms out of their 
feudal chaos. It was the attacks of the continent that de- 
veloped England. It was the Philistine horde that compelled 
the nation of Israel. Those old Israelite tribes were not very 
moral and not very learned, but no set of Modocs or Apache 
Indians were more desperate in a fight. They had been in 
slavery once and they did not purpose to go there again. 



Saul, The Giant, 

head and shoulders above ordinary men, who had already 
gained such a reputation in war that the mention of his name 
made people's hair stand on end, and whose wrath was like 
the raging of a wounded lion, so that when he was angry 
people thought he was possessed of the anger of the gods — 
i st Sam., xi: 6 — it was this raging Saul who now comes into 
the historv. 

The enemy had captured a multitude of Israelites and shut 
them up in a walled town and had given them this horrible 
choice— they might all be massacred in the pen, or they could 
have their eyes torn out and be carried away into perpetual 
slavery. The men begged a few days' mercy that they might 
decide which fate they would accept. In the meantime they 
contrived to get word to Saul. Saul went about the business 



20 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

in the grand old barbarian way. He chopped up two oxen and 
sent swift heralds all through the tribes carrying those bloody 
pieces, and crying: "Thus, O men of Israel, if you do not 
rally around the banner of Saul before to-morrow noon." They 
rallied ; and the roaring giant led them into a victorious battle, 
and the fated prisoners of Jabesh were released, (ist Sam., 
chap, xi.) 

That was the beginning of the great Israelite war for inde- 
pendence. A war that lasted eighty years. Nearly forty years 
under Saul ; more than forty years under David. From middle 
life until his old age this giant Saul, this lion of the tribe of 
Benjamin, did battle for the homes and the liberties of Israel. 
Of course he came to be an organizer and gathered a strong 
army about himself. Of course he was a despot and a tyrant 
whom his own soldiers admired and feared as they might ad- 
mire the power and fear the wrath of an incarnate devil. After 
some great battle the soldiers proclaimed him their king, as the 
Roman army used to do — or perhaps, he proclaimed himself 
king, and compelled Samuel to anoint him. That was why 
Samuel didn't like it. The warrior was becoming more power- 
ful than the soothsayer. 

On the general subject of kings we may truthfully say that 
there comes a time in the intellectual development of nations 
when kings are a hindrance to progress, but in the early history 
of nation-building they were essential. Without kings, power- 
ful, despotic and implacable, there never could have been a 
nation on the face of the earth. It required just such men of 
daring and wrath and blood as the son of Kish to bring those 
wild Israelite warriors into subjection and organize those 
ignorant and rebellious tribes into a central government. In 
forty years of war Saul had laid the foundations of a monarchy 
which lasted five centuries. No priest could have done it. 
Such work does not lie within the boundaries of priestly 
method. 

Every student of history knows that war is a heat in which 
men can be fused into a union as iron is welded with fire. Our 
own congress did more to centralize legislation in five years of 
war than it could do in fifty years of peace. During one great 
century of war the Mohammedan empire was created out of 



THE NATIONAL PEBIOD. 21 

scattered fragments. During forty years of war Saul got the 
tribal idea pretty well hammered out of those old Israelite 
heads and the national idea about half hammered in. 



David, Not u The Psalmist" 

It was not in the nature of things that Saul should have 
smooth sailing in his own camp. He was not a smooth man. 
Old Samuel was there to do what mischief he could. He was 
a smooth man — as smooth as Merlin. Trouble came in the 
shape of a rival king. A young hero by the name of David, a 
dare-devil equal to Saul himself, was urged on by Samuel and 
by his own ambitions. Saul and David fought the common 
enemy and fought each other, but David was young and aged 
Saul must die. 

O, this David, how he has been whitewashed ! And how 
belittled ! He was not a good little man ; he was a bad great 
man. We have him doddled down the centuries as a singer of 
sweet psalms, a pensive player on the harp, the collector of a 
church building fund, the maker of a tearful ode when King 
Saul dies; we have him declaring that Saul had been "pleasant 
and lovely" in his life. All that would be about as true of 
Borgia or of Nero as of David. If David had been that kind 
of a man the half-born Israelite nation would also have died 
with Saul. Pleasant and musical and poetic times had not yet 
come. There must be a lion's whelp to growl when the old 
lion could not roar. The Israelites must still have an indomi- 
table master. There were forty more years of horrible war be- 
fore the nation should be firmly established. There must be a 
savage leader for that savage period. David was the man. 

You get some real glimpses at David in those stories of how 
he slew lions and bears on the mountains, and how he over- 
came a Philistine giant in single combat. This Goliath story, 
however, has all the metal taken out of it by the priestly his- 
torian. The slender shepherd lad with his sling and his pebbles 
will do for the infant class, but it will not do for anybody out- 
side of the infant class. You get another genuine look at 
David in that story of the murder of Saul's seven grandsons 



22 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

after Saul's death. The author has glossed the fact all it would 
bear, but there is the fact. David meant to rid himself of all 
rivals or possible pretenders to the throne. Read that touch- 
ing lament for Saul in the first chapter of Second Samuel, 
and then read this murderous account in the twenty-first 
chapter, and imagine, if you can, the difficulties of the his- 
torian. Even through the whitewashing you catch glimpses 
here and there of the real character. David might collect the 
money, but he could not build the temple, because he had been 
"a man of blood." I suppose the simple fact is that he con- 
templated building a temple to his god. Jahveh he worshiped 
as the god of battle. He would offer praise to his warrior di- 
vinity. Constant war too long delayed his building. You get 
another very close look at David in that disreputable affair 
with Bathsheba and Uriah. 

No psalm singer was David, unless he sang the one hun- 
dred and ninth psalm. No ode-writer and no gentle spirit was 
he ; but a sensual, revengeful, implacable warrior, at once brave 
and cunning, shrewd and resistless, but an infinitely selfish, 
Cromwellian sort of patriot. He started out on Saul's founda- 
tion to build a kingdom that should be his own kingdom, and 
he slaughtered his enemies in the field and his rivals in the 
home with equal zest. He had the kind of a conscience that 
never protested until after the deed was done. Then he could 
repent — David always repented in public — and make it right 
with the people. 

The intellectual development of the Israelites during that 
eighty years of war had been so immense as to lift them out of 
their lingering barbarism and set them on their feet as a civil- 
ized, nationalized and progressive race. If Solomon had been 
another Saul or David, Israel might have become a great 
nation. 

The time comes, late in history, when war, like a king, is a 
hindrance to the progress of civilization ; but in the early pro- 
duction of civilization all other forces combined do not equal a 
great and successful war. It is the only force that can vitalize 
the minds of primitive men. 



THE NATIONAL PERIOD. 23 

Solomon, The Uuwise. 

During that great century from i ioo to iooo B. C, the Israelite 
tribes were developed into a nation. The possibility lay before 
them of developing into a great nation. They, instead of the 
Persians, the Medes, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, 
might have risen to the position of power; might have be- 
come, next to Egypt, the sovereign empire of the Mediterranean 
world. 

The ambition for great conquest and splendid empire must 
have burned in the souls of all prominent men during the later 
years of David's life. If the fatal mistake of hereditary king- 
ship had not been immediately decided upon, if some great 
soldier of David's army had succeeded him, as he succeeded 
Saul, it is impossible to imagine how different the history of 
the world might have been. 

Another eighty years like that eighty under Saul and David, 
another eighty years of conquest and centralization, another 
eighty years of military discipline and of such wondrous intel- 
lectual development as it would have brought, and the Medi- 
terranean sea from the Nile around to the Bosphorus might 
have been girded with the fortresses and the growing cities of 
the great Israelite monarchy. But David had too much con- 
fidence in his literary son. Solomon was to David, politi- 
cally, what Richard Cromwell was to sturdy and resistless old 
Oliver. If Mohammed had been succeeded by a peace-loving 
and art-loving son, who wasted his father's revenue and wore 
out the lives of his father's men in building needless mansions 
in useless places, the Mohammedan empire so auspiciously be- 
gun would have sunk down again into political insignificance. 
After Mohammed came the great calif, Omer, and after him 
other great califs, each winning his way to supreme command 
by supreme abilities. Each successive ruler was a genius and 
a master, like the first, and so the empire grew to wondrous 
proportions. That David was strong enough to impose his 
weak son upon the Israelite nation was the nation's fate. An 
old and well-established nation can endure the Louis XVI's 
who come along in the hereditary succession ; but a new 
nation that is still fighting for existence, and whose work must 



24 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

be an outreaching and daring and conquering work, needs a 
strong man at the helm. 

Solomon was the kind of a ruler that would wreck even an 
old and well-established kingdom ; no marvel if he wrecked a 
kingdom that was yet in its pulpy babyhood. I do not refer 
especially to Solomon's immorality, though in that regard he 
was a bad enough example, and his entire influence must have 
been to sensualize the nation, and sensuality is inherent weak- 
ness ; still we must remember that some of the most immoral 
men of history have been among the greatest and most suc- 
cessful statesmen. They have had intellectual ability and per- 
sonal force of character still greater than their passions. I 
refer to the weakness of Solomon's statesmanship. 

There are two ways in which a young man or a young nation 
can invest money. If a young man puts money into land that 
is well situated, where business will come to it and increase its 
value, he prepares a fortune for himself. If he puts vast money 
into a fine house, not a business house but a luxurious palace 
for his personal comfort, that house, the repairing of it, the 
keeping it up as an establishment, will absorb what fortune he 
has left and itself will constantly decrease in value, and he shall 
sink into abysmal debts. 

It is exactly so with a young nation. It needs to put its 
money and the energy of its manhood into the acquirement of 
territory — all the territory it can protect. There were people 
in America who thought that Adams and Jay and Franklin 
were foolishly greedy in driving through that treaty of Paris 
by which we secured the wild and wonderful territory from the 
Blue Ridge to the great lakes and to the Mississippi. What 
could we do with all that territory? We have found use for it. 
Again, when Jefferson and Monroe carried the purchase of 
Louisiana from Napoleon, paying him 115,000,000 that our 
young nation could poorly spare, there were people who thought 
it a great waste of money. But we have found magnificent 
use for that territory. Just think what that Louisiana terri- 
tory was — the states of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, 
Kansas, Nebraska, half of Minnesota, half of Colorado, North 
and South Dakota, Wyoming and the Indian Territory. All 
of that for $15,000,000 ! If that $15,000,000 had been put into a 



THE NATIONAL PERIOD. 2S 

great palace, somewhere in the Pennsylvania woods, to moulder 
and decay and leave not a wrack behind, you would have the 
statesmanship of Solomon instead of the statesmanship of 
Jefferson. 

You remember how Florida and California and New Mexico 
and Alaska have all been purchased, and how people com- 
plained at the waste of money, and how every dollar of the 
cost has proven to be worth a thousand or ten thousand dollars 
to us. That is the way Rome built itself up, that is the way 
Mohammedanism built itself, that is the way England and 
every other great nation built itself — if not with an enormous 
expenditure of money, then with an enormous expenditure of 
men in battle — by reaching out for territory in the vigorous 
days of the nation's youth. 

Instead of using money and men that way, Solomon built 
houses. He was a dilettante at architecture. We are told not 
only that he put a fortune into the temple, but that for thirteen 
years he was building himself a royal palace, and then he built 
another royal palace up in Mt. Lebanon, and a third royal 
palace for his Egyptian wife. Then we are told that he built a 
number of cities outright — Tadmor in the wilderness, Beth- 
horon the upper and Beth-horon the nether, Baalath, and many 
more. Like Louis XIV. and Louis XV., instead of using the 
national treasury to expand the national power and lay the 
foundations of a great and prosperous future, he squandered 
the treasury, sapped the life of the nation in vain and foolish 
luxuries of architecture. 

No man can understand the downfall of the French monarchy 
until he walks through those miles and miles of costly palaces. 
Louis XIV. alone spent more money on palaces that the United 
States paid for that whole wondrous realm between the Missis- 
sippi river and the Pacific ocean. We were able to buy from 
France that magnificent territory, which we have carved into 
eight or ten great states, for $15,000,000, largely because the 
French monarchs had pauperized their nation with needless 
and foolish architecture. 

The French monarchs ought to have known better. They 
had a melancholy example near at hand. Italy had pauperized 
herself by architecture. The cathedrals had sapped the last 
4 



26 RESULTS OF HIGHER .CRITICISM. 

dollar of Italy's treasury, and the disreputable schemes put on 
foot to raise money for the completion of St. Peter's broke the 
back of the Catholic church and started the great Protestant 
revolt. To this day Italy has not recovered from that pauper- 
izing of herself to build cathedrals. The French monarchs 
with their fatal palaces, and the popes with their suicidal 
churches, might all have learned from Solomon, who squan- 
dered the money and the manhood of his little empire on fine 
houses which the heathen pulled down and annihilated. 



The Crisis. 

Before Solomon's death he had hopelessly weakened the 
nation. Men become heroes in war. They became beasts of 
burden in these vast royal enterprises of palace-building. In 
less than thirty years after the completion of the temple the 
Israelite nation broke asunder, and henceforth, for two hundred 
and fifty years more, we have two insignificant, petty, quarrel- 
ing kingdoms, so small and so weak and so hopeless of any po- 
litical future as to demand our pity. In all political history that 
is the most melancholy case of arrested development. 

When a man or a nation has once held the reins of power, 
has entertained great hopes and felt the hot pulse of lofty am- 
bitions, and when those hopes and ambitions have been thrown 
down and crushed ; in nearly every case that man or that 
nation sinks into the weakness and the irritability of dis- 
couragement. Year after year with the man, and generation after 
generation with the nation, may be harbored the dream of 
attaining and surpassing all that was lost; but the energy and 
bravery to accomplish that dream are dead. The dream be- 
comes a romance, and it may work a great inward change of 
character, but the outward greatness seldom comes a second 
time. More seldom to nations than to individuals. 

" There is a tide in the affairs of men, 
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune ; 
Omitted, all the voyage of their life 
Is bound in shallows and in miseries." 

That is even more true of the tides in the affairs of nations. 
The flood tide of Israelite affairs was at the coronation of Solo- 



THE NATIONAL PERIOD. 27 

mon. Solomon omitted to swing the nation up into the pro- 
gressive current, and all its political voyage thereafter was 
bound in shallows and in miseries. 

We shall appreciate more clearly the case of Israel if we 
pause to imagine what the history of our own American repub- 
lic might have been. The flood tide of our American affairs 
came in the winter of 1782-3. The Revolutionary war was 
practically at an end. The work of arms was complete. Now 
came the work of brains. The great quadruple treaty with 
England and France and Spain, which was to fix the boundaries 
resulting from the war, was in process of negotiation. In his 
magnificent work on " The Critical Period of American History" 
Fiske has told, better than any other, the interesting story. 
There was a Spaniard, the Count Aranda, in that great con- 
ference, who appreciated the danger of giving the Americans 
too much land. He wrote a letter to his monarch which con- 
tains this famous prophecy — prophecy of evil to monarchies : 
" The federal republic is born a pigmy. The day may come 
when it will be a giant — even a colossus. * * * The facility 
for establishing a new population on immense lands will draw 
thither the farmers and artisans of all nations." But with this 
great danger in their minds, the Yankee shrewdness of John 
Jay and the trip-hammer persistence of John Adams and the 
deep, quiet, smooth manouvering of Benjamin Franklin, were 
too much for the determined Englishmen and the wily French- 
men and the tricky Spaniards. After eighteen months of the 
most consummate skill and tact the greatest treaty in the his- 
tory of statesmanship, the Treaty of Paris, was signed on Sep- 
tember 3, 1783, and that treaty gave the "pigmy republic" all 
the lands from the Atlantic to the Mississippi river, and from 
the Great Lakes to Louisiana and Florida. England and 
France were jealous of each other, and England and Spain 
were jealous of each other, and France and Spain were jealous 
of each other, and these long-headed Americans played upon 
the jealousies of all of them, and at last verified the old fable 
by dividing the broken shell among the kings and taking the 
kernel themselves. 

Now, suppose that our young republic had been represented 
in that great council of nations by weak men or by men lack- 



28 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

ing in the genius of statesmanship, by men who could be 
bought off from their great ambitions with money. Suppose 
that our commissioners had been willing to accept a few mil- 
lion dollars in lieu of that vast territory, and that the money 
had been expended in a superb palace for the chief executive — 
that would have been Solomon's kind of statesmanship. Sup- 
pose the United States had been confined to this little strip of 
land along the Atlantic coast from Boston to Charleston, while 
England kept all the territory northwest of the Blue Ridge and 
the Catskills and the White Mountains, while Spain and France 
divided the whole great West and South between them ; that 
would have given the United States the kind of an outlook 
that Solomon gave to Israel. Suppose that as time went on, 
three or four great nations should have grown up around us, 
confining our republic to a narrower and smaller strip of land 
along the Atlantic seaboard — that would have been a repetition 
of the conditions of Israel in the times that followed Solomon. 
" Solomon the Wise." He may have been wise as a proverb- 
maker ; wise in the realm of the naturalist, when " he spake of 
beasts and birds, and the hyssop that springeth out of the wall ;" 
but he was far from wise as a nation-maker, and he spake very 
foolishly when he ordered the energies of his people consumed 
in heaping up stones into the likeness of royal palaces. 

Suppose that our little shoestring republic, confined to the 
stretching sands of the seashore, had broken in twain a few 
years after the Declaration of Independence; one little republic 
centered in Boston and the other little republic centered in 
Richmond; and that these two republics should have con- 
stantly quarreled and fought with each other — each growing 
weaker and smaller as the nations which crowded them became 
populous and rich and all powerful — that would have been to 
repeat the experience of Israel and Judah, which found the 
Assyrian and the Mede and the Babylonian and the Greek sur- 
rounding them and cutting off all hope of national greatness. 

With that termination of its political prospects the Hebrew 
nation must either cease to exist or turn its energies into a new 
channel. 



TEE NATIONAL PERIOD. 29 

Religion and Literature of the National Period. 

The great religious fact of this age was the building of the 
temple. Our common ideas of that building are immensely- 
exaggerated. The author of Chronicles makes it to have cost 
three or four hundred millions of dollars, but many commen- 
tators think that two or three extra noughts have crept into 
that stupendous estimate. If we divide it by one thousand we 
shall, perhaps, be as near the truth. The story of the dedica- 
tion, during which one hundred and forty-four thousand sheep 
and cattle were offered as sacrifices, also needs to be divided 
by one thousand. Our common ideas of the elaborate ritual- 
ism and the splendid priesthood of that age, must suffer a like 
shrinkage. 

There was no priesthood before there was a temple. Priests, 
men who had come to be regarded as proper men to conduct 
religious ceremonies on special occasions, there doubtless were 
— but no organized priesthood. The priesthood was the natural 
and necessary result of the temple. The men who were ap- 
pointed to care for the temple and to lead in the sacrificial 
offerings very soon formed a priesthood and claimed a mo- 
nopoly in the entire conduct and regulation of worship. Of 
course they would eventually claim special privileges and the 
mediatorship between God and man. Priests always do. 

There was doubtless a sincere feeling of devotion in building 
the temple. Doubtless, also, there was a vast amount of 
Solomon's personal vanity in the work. Just as doubtless, also, 
there was a decisive sense of political genius in it. With po- 
litical union of the tribes, with a centralized government in 
David's new city, it was natural and proper that religion should 
be centralized. The great fact in connection with the temple 
was just this: it broke up the local ideas and habits of wor- 
ship. It destroyed the isolated altars. It took the conduct of 
worship out of the hands of the chiefs. It carried the hearts 
of the people to Jerusalem, where was the centre of political 
power. It linked together the images of God and the king. 
It was the beginning of priestly routine. Henceforth Israel be- 
came slowly but surely sacerdotal, ecclesiastical, and polytheism 
slowly died out. With a splendid temple, the conception of 



30 BESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

God enlarged and spiritualized. The god of an ambitious 
nation, worshiped by mitred and solemn priests in a gorgeous 
building, was very different from the god of a stone that was 
carried about in a box and captured by the Philistines. Let us 
understand, however, that in comparison with the elaborate 
ritualism of the second temple, under Nehemiah, the worship 
in Solomon's temple was informal and primitive. It was 
only the awkward and feeble beginning of a new order which 
required five centuries to develop into the ecclesiasticism of 
Nehemiah. The Hebrews were not yet a specially religious 
people as they afterwards came to be. 

As for the literature of this period, it is difficult to speak. In 
the rush of intellectual development during that great century 
from noo to xooo B. C, it is not unlikely that the Hebrews de- 
veloped an alphabet and began a crude sort of half-hieroglyphic 
writing. Two books especially are often quoted or mentioned 
— " The Wars of the Lord"— and. the " Book of Jasker." The 
first tells its contents in the title. It must have been an ac- 
count of Israel's wars from Joshua to David. The other was a 
book of national songs, and songs in honor of great men, such 
as the song of Moses, the song of Deborah, David's ode to 
Saul — all of them, of course, written by other people. 

These early books were crude both in matter and form, and 
were replaced by others on the same subjects at a later age. 
Perhaps we have the gist of The Wars of the Lord in 
Judges and Samuel, with the best fragments of Jasher in the 
Psalms. It is also supposed that there had been worked out 
during the National Period a primitive Decalogue, " Ten 
Words " as it was anciently called — a group of moral and re- 
ligious apothegms — but that, also, was recast by the finer moral 
sense and higher religious instinct of a later age. We must 
come along into the third period of the history before we find 
any noble developments in writing or in theology or in the 
moral sense or in religious feeling. 



TEE NATIONAL PERIOD. 31 

[Religious Development. 

In our childhood we supposed that, while other nations 
were political, military, secular, the Irsaelities were always and 
everywhere a praying and worshiping race, whose constant 
thought was of God and whose greatest energies were expended 
on theology and ritualism. In a modified sense that came to 
be the fact under the prophets and priests, but it was not a 
fact in the earlier centuries. 

Every ancient nation developed very characteristic features. 
The Greeks became a nation of artists and orators. The Rom- 
ans became a nation of soldiers and lawyers. In the beginning 
it was not so : the Greeks were not specially artistic, the 
Romans were not specially given to the study of law, the 
Irsaelities were specially religious. Every race characteristic 
has been a development, a purely scientific result of natural 
selection, an adaptation of thought and feeling to circum- 
stances. There was something in the qlimate, something in 
the geography, something in the incidents and accidents of its 
early history to give this or that turn to the popular 
thought of each race. Once an ancient race was started on a 
particular line of development it followed that line with great 
persistence and with a singleness of mind which would be im- 
possible to modern nations. Ancient nations had little inter- 
course with each other. They met only to fight. They did 
not study each other's literature or politics or theology or 
social customs. With a spirit of most intense bigotry and 
most stolid exclusiveness they loved their own ideas and 
customs, and blindly hated all other. 

In these days an Englishman or a German or an American 
would be a metropolitan sort of man whether you placed him in 
Yucatan or Labrador, because he has studied the life of all 
races and traveled everywhere and has absorbed the spirit of 
universal genius. The world is his home ; human history is 
his text book ; the laws of nature are his appeal. People are 
getting rid of characteristics now. To be peculiar is not good 
form. To dwell on one idea and neglect everything else is to 
be deemed a crank or a madman. In olden times an entire 
nation would pursue one line of thought or one line of work 
century after century. Thus the Greeks pursued art, until 



32 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

they brought it to such perfection as we moderns cannot even 
copy, muclj. less rival. Thus the Romans pursued law and the 
science of government, until they became the teachers of all 
ages in the matter of organization. Thus the Irsaelities pur- 
sued the sentiment of religion, until their sermons and ex- 
hortations and prayers and psalms of praise, their expressions 
of worship and their longings for the spiritual and the im- 
mortal, shall be the models for man's expression of his devout 
feeling in all the coming years. 

I have been asked why I keep the Bible on- my pulpit and 
read texts from it if I do not believe that God wrote it. Go ask 
the artist why he studies a Greek statue and constantly refers 
to its lines of beauty, if he does not believe that God carved it. 
Yes, we call a man a crank who knows only one thing ; but 
your crank is likely to know that one thing a great deal better 
than other folks know it. Genius is the respectful word — an 
enemy says "crank.'' In his line the man of one idea is your 
teacher, but you stultify yourself and put him in a false 
position when you ask him to teach you anything that is not 
in his line. We go to the Greek to learn art, but we do not go 
to the Greek to learn morals or commerce or the science of 
political organization. We go to the Israelite to learn religion, 
but we do not go to the Israelite to learn geography or 
geology or any natural science or politics or literature or 
anything but the depth and height and wondrous express- 
ion of religious feel ng. We do not even go to the Bible 
to learn theology, or if we do we shall get sadly mixed. The 
Bible has this one sole glory — it is the supreme and multiform 
statement of religious feeling. That became the characteristic 
of Israelite life, and the Bible contains just what the Israelites 
lived. The Hebrews were not primarily religious in any re- 
markable degree. That wonderful sentiment was developed 
by the circumstances of their history. 



ISRAEL AND JUDAB. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Israel and Judah. 

The New Ideal. 

If our American Republic had been hindered, cramped, 
divided, crushed, as the Irsaelite nation was, what, suppose 
you, would have been the result in the thought and feeling of 
our public leaders? What turn would their aspirations have 
taken ? 

Say what you will, the hopes and the aspirations of national 
leaders are moulded by their conception of providence, by what 
they conceive to be the "manifest destiny" of their nation. We 
know what conception of manifest destiny has inspired our 
American leaders. They have believed that God meant to 
develop this into a wondrously great nation of liberty and 
equality. Absolute faith in the unspeakably grand future of 
this nation, its ability to cope with the whole world while it 
should be a refuge for the oppressed of the whole world — that 
has been the noble belief in providence which inspired every 
great leader, and moulded public sentiment, from the days of 
old Sam Adams until now. 

Suppose that great dream had been utterly broken and 
crushed. Suppose, as we come along down to the days of John 
Quincy Adams and Jackson and Webster and Clay, that all 
hope of our great political future had vanished, that all confi- 
dence in the conquering power of our armies had been dis- 
pelled, what then would they have concluded was the purpose 
of God, the working of his providence, concerning us? What 
would they have said was our manifest destiny ? I think it 
perfectly clear that the children of the Puritans would have 
said on this wise : " Our revolutionary fathers thought God 
intended to build a great nation here, but we now see that 
such was not his purpose. Our fathers believed that God 
meant to establish a vast republic by means of armies and the 



84 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

acquisition of territory, but we now see that such was not his 
method. The divine purpose in us is not a great nation. The 
divine method is not the use of armies. God's purpose evident- 
ly is that we shall be the conservators of true religion. We 
shall keep inviolate and diligently teach the Puritan faith. 
That is what our forefathers were guided across the wild ocean 
to this wilderness for. That is why we were given our in- 
dependence. That is why we were not allowed to become a 
great nation. God would not have our minds distract with 
vast political ambitions. He would compel us to the strict 
recognition of our work as the conservators of religious truth. 
We must recognize our mission on earth to be the preservation 
and the spread of the Puritan faith." 

That is the way our leading men would be talking and writ- 
ing to-day if the treaty of Paris had been conducted by such a 
diplomat as Solomon. That is exactly the way the leading 
Israelites began to feel and talk and write in the sad century 
that followed Solomon. For several succeeding centuries 
that was the popular conviction. The great hope of political 
empire was gone. Confidence in the prowess of kings and 
armies was gone. When the keen edge of that disappoint- 
ment had worn dull and smooth the leading men began to say, 
" Our destiny is a religious one. We are to stand among the 
heathen nations as representative of the true faith." It is 
a curious fact, but an everlasting fact, that men accept the 
weaknesses and mistakes just as they accept the wisdoms and 
victories of their history as the working out of Divine purpose 
in their behalf. The political weakness and ignorance of 
Solomon came to be regarded as God's design. That is the 
perfectly natural way in which the Irsaelites became an 
especially religious people. The failure through Solomon's 
incompetence of their political ambitions, the binding of their 
political history in shallows and in miseries, gave the religious 
turn to their thoughts and feelings. Then it was easy for them 
to look backward and says: "Why, of course; strange we 
never saw it before ! That is why God led our fathers out of 
Egypt ; that is why He gave Canaan into their hands ; that is 
why He drove out the heathen by the hands of Saul and 
David ; that is why the tribes were cemented into a nation ; 



IBBABL AND JUDAH. 33 

that is why we were not allowed to become a great and 
ambitious nation ; that is why God keeps us alive, but keeps us 
humble and weak among nations, that by means of us He 
might preserve the true religion in the midst of the world's 
great heathenisms." 

Henceforward, generation after generation and century after 
century, that was the conception which the Israelites had of 
their manifest destiny. Thus in a perfectly natural way they 
came to think of themselves as a chosen people, whose mission 
in the world was theological and whose work and whose 
methods must be different from the work and the methods of 
all other nations. That new conception of their destiny grew 
in seriousness and in power until it became a thing of marvel- 
ous influence, not only in their souls but in human history. 
This new and mighty dream that they were called of God to 
preserve and teach the one true and holy religion — that dream 
became their energy, their patient endurance, their light and 
inspiration ; and it led them on, age after age, and developed 
their strange, grand characteristics and made them the world's 
religious teachers. 



Prophets and Prophecy. 

During the period of the Two Kingdoms, from 975 to 721 
B. C, the kings in a limited sense were the rulers of the Heb- 
rew people, but the prophets were the leaders of thought, the 
moulders of character, the fashioners of the mental and moral 
and political destinies of the race. The religious sentiment be- 
came, as we have seen, the dominant impulse upon the division 
of the kingdom. The men who stand for the dominant im- 
pulse are the real directors of the currents of a people's life. 
Just as the artists and orators and poets of Greece were more 
powerful than the political rulers, because art and literature 
were the dominant impulses of Greek life ; so the prophets were 
the directing geniuses of Hebrew life, because religion had 
come to be the chief concern of the Hebrews. 

The prophets were not men of any official station, as the 
popes and cardinals of the Catholic church, or even as the 
ordained clergymen and preachers of the Protestant churches. 



36 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

They were not allied with any organization. They did not 
aim to build a church or a party. They were unordained 
preachers, independent reformers, orators, writers, like Savana- 
rola, Luther, Wilberforce, Garrison, if these had been uncon- 
nected with all organizations. They were the self-appointed, 
God-called teachers of whole people, who spake for the truth 
and the right as they understood it; and they were responsible 
to nobody. They did their work as poets and artists and his- 
torians do, speaking their word out of their own free convic- 
tions. 

The priests were officers of the Temple ; in a sense, of course, 
officers of the government, dependent on the favors of kings 
as the officials of an established church always are. The 
priests of this third period of history were not the power they 
afterward came to be. Their time had not yet arrived. The 
prophets were the unorganized, isolated, independent moulders 
and directors of popular thought and feeling. 

Our childhood idea of the prophets was that they were men 
to whom God revealed the secrets of the future, and that their 
mission was to stand forth on occasion and tell the people or 
the king what would come to pass a year or a century or 
several centuries hence. The sooner we get over that childish 
idea the better it will be for our intelligent appreciation of his- 
tory. Whenever and wherever you find a book that contains 
any minute and circumstantial description of a future historic 
event you may rest assured that the book, or at least that part 
of it, was written after the event. In that extraordinary and 
miraculous sense of the word we shall be on safe ground, as 
students of history, to put aside the thought that there ever 
was any such thing as prophecy. Of course, in the ordinary 
and natural sense of the word all literature is filled with pro- 
phecy. All scientific teaching, all political exhortation, is packed 
with predictions of what will come to pass under this or that 
set of conditions. The elder Pitt predicted at the outset of the 
revolutionary war that the American colonies would gain their 
liberty. Count Aranda predicted that our pigmy republic 
would become a colossus if it laid hands on the Mississippi 
valley. The aged Toscanelli, watching the advance of science, 
forty years before the ships of Columbus were fitted out, pre- 



ISRAEL AND JUDAH. 37 

dieted that Europeans would yet sail westward across the 
ocean to China. Seneca, the Roman philospher, at about the 
year 50 A D. had predicted that travelers would yet discover a 
western route to the Indies. Strabo, the Greek geographer, 
writing about the time of Christ's birth, predicted that the 
Atlantic ocean contained somewhere a vast, inhabited, un- 
known world. These prophecies, of course, had nothing mira- 
culous in them, and were not the results of any special inspira- 
tion from heaven. They were the bold judgments of thought- 
ful men who carefully studied the political or scientific con- 
ditions. 

Moral teachers who are careful students of social and nation- 
al affairs have always been able to predict something of the 
future course of events. When Eli Whitney invented the 
cotton gin there were a thousand men who could dimly foresee 
its political effects in American history — how it would increase 
the cotton plantations — how it would increase the demand for 
slave labor — how it would increase the demand for slave terri- 
tory — and southern politicans, especially in Virginia, who had 
hitherto been anxious to get rid of slavery, changed their 
tactics. 

Any man to-day who has a free mind and reads the great 
literature of the age and notes the trend of popular thought 
can predict the utter collapse and destruction of endless 
punishment, and he can prophesy the condition of the religious 
world when that disreputable old dogma shall no longer exist. 
He can foretell with perfect clearness that churches will then 
give more heed to moral culture than to the catechism, that 
character and kindness will be considered more sacred than 
creeds, that persecution for opinion's sake will be done away, 
and that a thousand stupid prejudices which now burden and 
humiliate religion will give place to the finer sentiments which 
bless human society. 

In this perfectly natural way the prophets looked out into 
the future years and pictured the blessings and the calamities 
that would come of good or evil conduct. Time was when 
they predicted the downfall of their own nation for its own 
vices. Because this appeal to the future was their habit, their 
style of preaching, they were called, not reformers, as we should 



38 BESTTLTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

properly call them, but prophets. They were no more able than 
any other class of men to see specific and unrelated events of 
the future. A prophet could no more tell the name of a king 
or give an account of a battle a hundred years in the future 
than a politician to-day could name the President or outline 
the campaign of the year 2000. When you read any such spe- 
cific prophecy you may know it was not written till afterward. 
Hebrew religion, like all other, made its first development as 
a theology, then a later and better development as a moral 
impulse. 



Theological Prophets. 

For about a hundred and seventy- five years after the division 
of Solomon's kingdom the prophets were mainly concerned 
with theology. Their great aim was to establish belief in the 
God of Israel, and to root out the lingering polytheism of the 
times. Elijah, who lived at the centre of that period, and who 
was in the midst of his great battle at the year 900, may be 
taken as the type of the theological prophets. The prophets 
of that age were not writers. We only know them, as we know 
the old kings, by the histories which were written centuries 
later. Of course the characteristic stories concerning them 
have been greatly exaggerated, but the exaggerations do not 
remove the fact that these stories are characteristic. The story 
of Elijah's sacrifice, as told in the eighteenth chapter of first 
Kings, has been miraculously improved since its first telling, 
but the spirit of it is characteristic. Not historically true in 
the sense of giving the physical facts — historically true in the 
higher sense that it tells us very clearly what kind of a reformer 
Elijah was. He was such a reformer as Calvin, as Torque- 
mada. If he could not persuade he would compel the accept- 
ance of his theology. Nearly all theologies of the past were 
established by physical force. The end justified the means, 
though the means were deceit and murder. 

From the year 975, on down to about the year 800 B. C, the 
prophets toiled and battled for belief in the God of Israel. It was 
a theological reform. It was followed by the great moral reform. 
Moral reform is a higher and finer work than theological 



ISRAEL AND JUDAH. 89 

reform, and comes later in social development. With the 
coming of the great moral prophets who looked upon conduct 
as equally sacred with and quite as important as belief, who 
regarded virtue as vastly more important than ritualism — with 
their advent, about the year 800 B. C, we enter upon the noble 
and inspiring period of Hebrew history. 



The Epoch of Reform. 

From the division of the kingdom, 975 B. C, to about the 
year 800 B. C, the work of the prophets was mainly directed 
against polytheism, and their ideal was to establish the wor- 
ship of Jahveh, as their national deity. Like nearly all other 
theologians, these early prophets supposed that the one thing 
needful in this world was correct belief, worship of the true 
God. The century that followed, from 800 to 700 B. C, was 
the great Hebrew epoch of moral teaching. Following back 
the line of our religious ancestry through twenty-seven cen- 
turies, we find three epochs of distinct and supreme moral 
teaching. During these periods character is set above theology, 
righteousness is considered more divine than ritual, a pure 
heart is deemed more sacred than any creed or church or 
day or book or form of worship, morality is glorified as the 
very essence of religion. The last of these epochs was inaugu- 
rated by Dr. Channing and furthered by the Unitarian church 
and the great liberal literature of this century. The second 
was the Christian era — the preaching of Jesus. The first was 
the era of the ethical prophets in the 8th century B. C. 
Throughout the rest of the long history the leaders and teach- 
ers have placed the dominant emphasis on belief or ritual or 
church organization. Of course it is not meant that morals were 
neglected. Exactly that is meant which is said. The Temple 
service and the ritualistic observances, among the Hebrews ; 
the priestly hierarchy and the infallibility of the Pope, among 
Catholics ; salvation by faith, among Protestants, have been 
the chief concerns. These distinctly theological matters have 
been placed above conduct, deemed more sacred than character. 
Personal righteousness was the central and supreme demand 
of the ethical prophets and of Jesus, as it has been of modern 



40 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

Unitarianism and modern literature. Of course it is not meant 
that the ethical prophets were indifferent to theological belief. 
Their growing conception of the unity of God was very sacred 
to them. They would have looked on any heretic who believed 
in the Trinity as a dangerous man. But they had come to see 
that true belief was not as important as good conduct. Moral 
questions are always the supreme questions of the age ; and woe 
unto the religion, and woe unto the world, when the teachers 
of religion do not appreciate that simple fact ! The great men 
who stand for ideal morality must become the supreme men of 
the age. Whether it be the independent Jesus, the Catholic 
Savonarola, the heathen Buddha, the Protestant Luther, the 
dissenting Wesley, the Unitarian Channing, the agnostic Adler, 
or the Hebrew prophets of old ; whatever their theology, the 
men of commanding genius in any age who plead and live out 
a noble morality are the men whose names come down the his- 
tory of nations with honor and praise. 



Morals and Literature. 

The beginning of this great age of Hebrew reform was also 
the dawn of the golden age of Hebrew literature. It is nat- 
ural that morality and literature should appear together. 
Thought and ethics may be divorced, but in their normal es- 
tate they are companions — the twin graces of humanity. Brain 
and heart evermore incline to assist each other. The lesson of 
history is, that when either is awakened from sleep the other is 
aroused to action. The supreme moral impulse which Jesus 
gave the world soon transformed the philosophies of the world. 
The Italian renaissance of genius called forth Europe's great 
moral reformation. The reform age inaugurated by Wilberforce 
in England culminated in the poems of Browningand Tennyson, 
the novels of Dickens and George Eliot, and the fine critical 
literature represented by Arnold and Ruskin. The anti-slavery 
agitation and the glorious literature of New England proceeded 
from the same soul of progress. Morals and literature both re- 
ceived a new and wonderful impulse about 800 B. C, in that 
old Palestine home of the Hebrews. The result of this double 
awakening was a greater and better conception of God. The 



ISRAEL AND JUDAS. 41 

prophets no longer thought of their deity as the Lord of Hosts, 
but as the Lord of Righteousness. In their broader ideas He 
was no longer the God of Israel, but the God of Nations, whose 
providence included and whose power blessed or punished the 
heathen peoples round about. 

The reform period had its roots in four prominent facts : a 
gradual development of intellect and moral feeling ; a sense of 
revolt from the formalism and hypocrisy of the priests ; a wide- 
spread disgust with the cruelty and sensuality of the kings ; 
and the birth of a number of great men. The political con- 
ditions were propitious for a moral revolution. The extreme 
depravity of rulers is always the occasion for reformers. The 
kings of the two little nations, for these hundred and seventy- 
five years, had been a race of petty and quarreling tyrants. 
Some were respectable and weak ; some were able (in a small 
degree) and disreputable. All in all they were a sorry lot. The 
eighth century was ushered in by two of the strongest since 
the time of Solomon. Uzziah, of " Judah," for several years was 
a ruler of promise ; but he only fulfilled the hopes of his people 
in a few successful wars, and in some commercial prosperity. 
His later influence was a moral and spiritual degradation. 
Jeroboam II., of " Israel," on a very limited scale, was a sort of 
Louis XIV. — a fighter, a builder, and a sensualist. Jeroboam 
II. had larger ability and worse influence than Uzziah. His 
name was the synonym of vice. His prosperity meant immoral 
luxury. The manners of the people, under such leadership, 
were becoming utterly corrupt. Jeroboam II. reigned about 
forty years ; Uzziah nearly fifty. Jeroboam II. had been twenty- 
five years on his throne, Uzziah ten, when the eighth century 
dawned. Under these rulers, of cruelty and sensuality, the 
priesthoods flourished. Religion was a belief and a ritual. If 
the rites were punctiliously observed right could be dispensed 
with. Conscience gave place to conformity. Hebrewism was 
foreshadowing the Catholicism of the dark ages — a luxurious 
king, a servile priesthood, a debased people, with a spirit of 
hypocrisy ruling them all. Reform there must be, or the time 
of dissolution was at hand. 

6 



42 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

Prophetic Literature. 

From among the reformers of that magnificent eighth cen- 
tury — how many of them we know not — stand forth the great 
names of Amos, Hosea, Isaiah and Micah, as the names of 
Phillips and Garrison stand out from the hosts of American re- 
formers. The oldest book of our Bible, in the sense that it 
was the first complete book put into its permanent form, is the 
book of Amos. Whether it was written by Amos may be a 
question. There seems no good reason why it should not 
have been. At all events, it gives us the gist of his many 
years of moral exhortation. It is such a book as we should 
have if the salient points were taken from a volume of Phil- 
lips' anti-slavery orations and combined into one short essay. 
In about that sense it may represent all that Amos said and 
wrote. Or it may be that this is simply one brief speech of 
his, on some most important occasion ; scores or hundreds of 
others having been lost. In this sense we must read nearly all of 
our prophetic books. They preserve one, or a few, of the 
prophet's great utterances ; or they are, in each case, a 
resume of the prophet's work, unsparingly condensed, and 
put into shape by a later hand. 

The book of Amos is launched against the drunkenness, the 
sensuality, the cruelty, the hypocrisy and the dead religious 
formalism of the times. His argument is that the nations 
round about — Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, Edom, Ammon, Moab — 
have been punished with defeat and slaughter for their immor- 
alities ; and that Israel must likewise suffer unless there be 
a complete reformation. He considers national destruction as 
the essential result of immorality. The crimes and vices of 
the land are already so great that God may raise up an enemy 
to put them to the sword any day. But he has faith that the 
worst will only be a discipline, a scourging, and that the rem- 
nant of loyal and true souls will be providentially assisted to 
rebuild a moral nation. 

Hosea follows Amos in the same strain. " The Lord hath 
a controversy with you because of your lying and stealing 
and killing and committing adultery." "Ye have sown the 
wind and ye shall reap the whirlwind." This book is a series 
of disconnected fragments of speeches or writings, and was put 



ISRAEL AND JUDAH. 48 

together by the prophet, or some one else, at the close of his 
labors. Kings, princes, recalcitrant priests, a dissolute public, 
all share his burning denunciations. He attacks idolatry on 
moral grounds. Faithfulness to Jahveh is .moral faithfulness. 
"The law" is the law of conduct. He reminds us of Savo- 
narola, especially in his appreciation that example is infinitely 
more important than creed and ritual. " Like priest, like peo- 
ple," was a home thrust at the bad example which nullifies good 
teaching. Hosea, like Amos, concludes with a hope of moral 
restoration and prosperity and peace. Happiness can only 
come of virtue. A season of success attained by wickedness 
ends in deeper doom. "The ways of the Lord are right and 
the just shall walk in them ; but the transgressors shall fall 
therein." Righteousness is a power in this world that must 
bring destruction to the transgressor. 

Next comes Isaiah. Our book of Isaiah, however, is three 
or four books in one. The last twenty-seven chapters — xl. to 
lxvi. inclusive — were composed by some unknown author of 
the sixth century, two hundred years after the time we are 
considering. That book, which is often called the work of the 
Second Isaiah, was, by mistake or purpose, finally united to the 
real Isaiah. Chapters xxxiv. to xxxix., inclusive, must also be 
substracted from the original document. So must chapters 
xxiv. to xxvii., inclusive. Then we must substract all but the 
first nine verses of chapter xiii. ; the first twenty-three verses 
of chapter xiv. and the first ten verses of chapter xxi. All 
these are of much later date than Isaiah. 

With all of these subtractions, the original Isaiah is still 
fragmentary, in the sense that it is a joining together of various 
prophetic utterances of different periods in the great prophet's 
career. Great he was, as a man, a reformer, an orator and a 
writer. Amos and Hosea, with the company of reformers 
led on by them, had filled the earlier and middle years of 
the century with an intense moral and intellectual energy. 
The company led by Isaiah and Micah had their activity in the 
latter part of the century, drawing on toward the year 700 B. 
C. Literature had made a splendid development. Isaiah's 
rhetoric is superb. He handles words and images like a 
Shakespeare. His literary genius has been his misfortune in 



44 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

the hands of commentators. The universe could have re- 
vealed no greater surprise to him than a fore-vision of the 
fact that upon one of his figures of speech — vii : 14 — the 
Christian church was to build a heaven-high system of theol- 
ogy. Of course, verse 16 explains it perfectly. The "child" 
to be born in less than a year from the time he speaks may be 
called Immanuel — " God with us " — for before that child shall 
grow out of his babyhood the land of Judah shall be free from the 
tyranny of the kings which now oppress her. A great many 
things in the Old Testament would be plain if theologians 
looked for explanations instead of mysteries. The word " vir- 
gin," in the 14th verse, is a forged mistranslation. The " butter 
and honey " of the 15th verse refer to the coming peace and 
plenty, when the threatening kings are dislodged, viii : 3 
and 4, is another use of a like figure of speech ; but the theolo- 
gians could hardly wrench that into any mysterious prophecy. 
The thought is exactly the same in Isaiah that we have had 
in Amos and Hosea. Nations are scourged for immorality. 
The overthrow of armies, the destruction of cities, the blasting 
of crops, the wasting of flocks and herds by disease ; drought, 
flood, fire, mildew, hail, tempest, pestilence, all calamities, are 
the scourges with which God makes chastisement for a peo- 
ple's vice. According to the prophets, God often used one bad 
nation to punish another bad nation. You must not conclude 
that victory always means favor. When a nation has been thus 
used as a weapon, it also may be scourged. It was thus that 
the exhortations of the prophets often got tangled. We shall 
see, later on, how this mistaken philosophy was appreciated. 
Like Amos and Hosea, Isaiah belabored the dead and decay- 
ing formalism of the priests : " To what purpose is the multi- 
tude of your sacrifices unto me, saith the Lord. Your new 
moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth." All the 
nations in turn — Damascus, Assyria, Moab, Edom, Tyre, 
Egypt, Ethiopia — are reviewed, and God's judgments upon 
them set forth in heroic language. The same great national 
hope re-appears in chapters xxxii. and xxxiii., which are the 
closing chapters of this wonderful book. Scourging will do its 
work. By suffering the people shall be reformed. A good 



ISRAEL AND JUDAH. 45 

king will be raised up to ruie a righteous nation amid peace 
and plenty. 

Micah is a sort of a pocket edition of Isaiah. Isaiah was a 
man of the city, with fine intellectual culture. Micah was a 
countryman, who mixes his metaphors, but speaks the moral 
truth with no uncertain sound. As was the case with Isaiah, 
the early portions of Micah were written before, and the 
later portions after, the destruction of Samaria and the 
downfall of " Israel," in 721 B.C. The Assyrians, hovering upon 
the northern kingdom with impending doom, finally striking 
and destroying it, gave the words of these two prophets an 
especial significance and force. 

Micah's earlier rebukes are hurled directly at the capitals of 
the two nations — Samaria and Jerusalem. Micah supposed 
that if the Assyrians captured Samaria they would also sweep 
down and desolate Jerusalem, whose doom he pictures in iii : 12. 
He has the prophet's hope, however. By this punishment God 
will purify the Hebrews, and then He will restore them, giving 
them power to defeat the Assyrians, (v : 5-10). 

V : 2 is another famous text which the theologians have griev- 
ously tormented into a far-reaching mystery. Kuenen says 
the translation should be : " From thee, O race of Ephrath," 
(the stock of David) " small as thou art among Judah's fami- 
lies, out of thee shall come forth one that shall rule over Israel, 
one whose descent is from ancient times." The simple idea is 
that, though the Assyrians plough both Samaria and Jerusalem, 
God will raise up a king of David's line to establish the new 
and glorious order. Micah was mistaken. The Assyrians 
ploughed Samaria, but they did not plough Jerusalem; and 
Samaria had no glorious restoration. 

The last two chapters belong to a late period in tEe prophet's 
life. The doom of Samaria weighs upon him and changes his 
voice to a mournful pleading. The Hebrew people is repre- 
sented as a child that is led out of Egypt and carefully nur- 
tured. The grown child was instructed in God's moral law : 
" What doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly and love 
mercy and walk humbly with thy God?" The instruction was 
neglected, the nurture forgotten ; but now comes penitence, 



46 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

and God confirms his oath that penitence shall be followed 
with blessing. 

Such is the teaching of these great prophets. There shall be 
no abiding happiness without righteousness. God punishes 
only that he may purify. A holy nation He will finally have, 
though He drag his people through blood and fire to scourge 
and burn the evil out of them. The prophets talk of nothing 
beyond the immediate future of their own race. They see 
nothing but a cleansed and restored Hebrew nation — a nation 
in whose moral and spiritual influence, all the nations of the 
earth shall be blessed. 



False Readings. 

All attempts to make them predict Christianity are forced, 
unnatural, and in the highest degree absurd. However their 
words may be adapted to the conditions of later centuries, or 
to the dream rather than the conditions, there is no reason to 
suppose that they, more than others, could tell what man 
should be born in a given town, and what things he would say 
and do, and what world-events should loom out of obscurity, 
seven centuries in the future. They certainly made enough 
mistakes in predicting the political greatness of their own na- 
tion to show that the future was as heavily veiled from their 
eyes as from ours. 

But suppose the prophets could have foreseen that Christ 
was to be born, that the Christian religion was to be established, 
that their own religion was to be thrust out and persecuted, 
that the temple they adored was no longer to be the centre and 
home of God's church, that the nation they loved better than 
their own lives was to be broken, dismantled, scattered to the 
four winds — would they have prophesied any such event very 
joyously ? They are pictured as looking forward to the ruin of 
all their hopes and ambitions and prides with unspeakable 
delight — does that seem quite natural ? 

Can you imagine a race of people, century after century, fore- 
telling the downfall of everything they hold dear in their social 
and political and religious life; looking forward to that calam- 
ity with rapture ; toiling and suffering on for its accomplish- 






ISRAEL AND JUDAH. 47 

ment ? If you cannot, then you must conclude that those al- 
leged prophecies of Christ do not refer to the coming of the 
Second Person of the Trinity. 

What was the one supreme idea of the Jewish religion ? The 
Unity of God. That doctrine they held with all the tenacity 
of life and love. For it they were ever ready to become 
martyrs. Can you imagine them constantly and happily pre- 
dicting a new doctrine, which was to dethrone and root out their 
own beloved faith and send their children forth to centuries of 
wandering and persecution ? If you cannot, then you must 
conclude that they never meant to prophesy the Christ of 
Christian theology. 

In Matthew ii : 15, we read one ol these so-called predictions : 
"Out of Egypt have I called my son." That is a garbled half 
sentence from Hosea. Matthew assumes to tell us what Hosea 
meant. He meant that the babe Jesus would be brought back 
from Egypt, after Joseph and Mary had fled thither to es- 
cape Herod. Luke does not agree with Matthew. Luke 
positively denies the flight into Egypt; recognizes that 
Herod had been several years dead when Jesus was 
born ; and says that Joseph and Mary, having no occasion to 
fly into Egypt or elsewhere, took the child immediately to 
Jerusalem, and "presented him in the Temple," and then "went 
to their own home in Nazareth." Read these contradictory ac- 
counts in the second of Matthew and the second of Luke. 
Matthew is always on the watch for prophecy of Christ. He 
presumes, it would seem, that few people read the Hebrew 
scriptures, and they with blinded eyes. The Christian church 
has diligently followed Matthew. 

Now, in simplest candor, what did Hosea mean ? Turn to 
xi : 1, " When Israel," (the people of Israel) "was a child, then 
I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt." It is this 
figure of speech — the Hebrews of the Exodus as God's child — 
that Micah quotes in vi 14. The prophets were not predictors 
of distant and mysterious events, but moral exhorters whose 
words always apply to their people's immediate future. 



48 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

Drama. 

The books of the four great prophets above named, (with one 
possible exception,) contain all the prophetic writings of the 
eighth century that have been preserved. They are but a few 
fragments from what must have been an abundant reform 
literature. It is impossible that an age could produce such 
writings and they be its entire production. We might as well 
think it possible that New England, in this nineteenth century, 
could produce Emerson's New England Reformers, Whittier's 
Eternal Goodness, Lowell's Bigelow Papers, and Phillips' oration 
on Daniel O'Connell, and produce nothing else. That were as 
impossible as to suppose that the first and only architecture of 
Europe consisted of the cathedrals of St. Peter's and Cologne. 
It is possible to imagine that, three thousand years hence, all 
else will have perished and been forgotten, and that a few of 
these greatest and finest products will be all that the men of the 
year 5,000 shall have or know of the architectural and literary 
works of Europe and America. 

The exception, above noted, is a part of the book of Zecha- 
riah. Some portions of chapters ix to xiii may have been writ- 
ten in the eighth century. If so, they were re-written and 
added to by a later hand. 

There were other kinds of writing than the prophetic in that 
eighth century. There was a dramatic literature as well as a 
reform literature. There was history, and poetry, also. 

In her delightful book on Egyptian explorations — Pharaoh's 
Fellahs — Miss Edwards says that we have looked at mummies 
until we have associated all Egyptian life with death, and can 
hardly imagine that Egyptians ever laughed and danced and 
made love like other folks. Our traditional conception of the 
Bible is not less absurd. We have studied its solemn exhort- 
ations until we can hardly imagine a Hebrew writer putting his 
thoughts in any other than a hortatory mould, or as having any 
other thought than the conduct of ceremonial worship, or the 
lurid thunderings of the law. 

That the Old Testament is what we have left of an ancient 
nation's literature is slowly dawning upon the public mind. 
That the Hebrews wrote history, just as other people did ; that 



ISRAEL AND JUDAH. 40 

they clothed their ideas in the forms of poetry, national songs, 
dramas and novels, just as other people have, is at last getting 
to be understood. 

One sample only of the dramatic writing of the eighth cen- 
tury remains to us — The Song of Solomon. This book has suf- 
fered unspeakable torture at the hands of theologians. In 
their irrational demand that it shall be a religious book, and 
even a book of Christian predictions, they have made it both 
ridiculous and repulsive. Even as a drama it is not supremely 
chaste, but as a sermon it were altogether broad. A style of 
dress may be allowed in the ball room and at the bathing beach 
that would be scandalizing in church; so a certain style of 
writing that a drama will bear were quite beyond endurance in 
a solemn religious appeal. You certainly would not appre- 
ciate " Romeo and Juliet " if you read it with the impression 
that Shakespeare meant it for a theological treatise — a re- 
ligious allegory — in which Romeo represented Christ and 
Juliet the Church. Such, however, is the very ridiculous 
interpretation we have all our lives heard given to the Song 
of Solomon. Let us understand, first of all, that this book 
is not theology but drama ; not religious, but secular. Of 
course it has a purpose — a moral purpose, as we shall presently 
note — a purpose that is not at all complimentary to Solomon. 

The exhortations of the prophets had wrought a wonderful 
work in purifying the family life of the Hebrew people. It can 
be safely said that no other ancient people esteemed the sanc- 
tities of the home so highly as did the Hebrews : but the 
Hebrews were not always so. Abraham and his Hagar, Jacob 
and his four wives, David and his Bathsheba, Solomon and his 
harem of a thousand women, do not indicate that the early 
Hebrews cared more for domestic purity than the early Greeks 
or Romans. Their primitive laws in the book of the Covenant 
have nothing to say against polygamy. But, with the coming 
of the great prophets, the Hebrews came to be a people of 
exceptional domestic purity. 

Notwithstanding his vices, the Hebrew people always rev- 
erenced Solomon, because he built the temple. His vices, 
however, must be rebuked, and the purity of marriage must be 
insisted on. That rebuke of royal vice and that insistance on 

7 



BO BESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

humble virtue compose the purpose of Solomon's Song. It 
is a song about Solomon, to his royal shame. 

The heroine of the drama is the Shulamite maiden, who 
lives in her mountain home and loves a shepherd lad of her 
own class. In one of his royal progresses to his summer pal- 
ace in the mountains, Solomon caught sight of this beautiful 
and happy peasant girl. He has her kidnapped and brought 
into the palace, where his court ladies strive to win her to their 
own disgraceful life. Their soft words and the king's enchant- 
ments are all in vain. The poor girl wanders about and bewails 
her absent shepherd lad. At last she escapes the gilded rep- 
robates, finds her lover, and is welcomed home by her brothers 
and her mother. 

Of course this drama did not stand alone as the one pro- 
duction of its kind in that age of literary activity. It is the 
single remnant that has floated down to us. It tells us that 
they had actors and theatres in those days, and that the proph- 
ets had succeeded in capturing and reforming the stage. It is 
altogether likely that the great majority of the plays were sup- 
pressed, and that this alone, because of its moral lesson, gained 
the favor of endurance. 



Wisdom Literature. 

In all ages there are men of practical worldly thought, keen 
observers of character and conduct, men of moral conviction, 
who are yet entirely dissociated from religious observances and 
theories. They may not be atheists nor materialists, but their 
religious belief, if they have any, is given no special place or force 
in their estimate of life in this world. Their standpoint is now ; 
they study actions ; they see results ; they seek what is wise — 
not present policy or gain, but worldly wisdom. They proclaim 
those methods— in the home, in society, in business, in politics, 
that support character, make a worthy reputation, build up the 
public virtue, insure an honorable success. Such men are wide 
awake to the foibles, faults, hypocrisies, assumptions and cant 
of the world ; and with their sturdy ethical demands they are 
likely to mingle a heavy spicing of ridicule. Proverbs and 
Ecclesiastes are the chief remnants which have come down to 



ISRAEL AND JUDAH. 31 

us of this old-time wisdom literature. These books cover a 
period of several centuries. A portion of Proverbs only belongs 
to the eighth century. Chapters x : i, to xxii : 16, compose the 
earliest collection. Of course these bright, pithy, profound 
sayings are a collection; the author simply put them into a 
versified or metrical form. He doubtless gathered them from 
all the literature of his acquaintance, as Allibone and Brewer 
and others have gathered their books of quotations. He also 
copied from oral tradition, folk lore, popular sayings. The 
Hebrews, as a people, then as now, were peculiar for their 
incisive observations of character and conduct. A people 
whose outward ambitions were so constantly foiled would 
naturally become a keen-witted people — shrewd, critical and 
somewhat cynical. Give the Irish a few generations of great 
commercial and military success, and they will become as stolid 
as the English. 

This oldest collection of proverbs is dedicated to Solomon, 
(x: 1.) The collector had no design of imposing Solomon as 
the author of them all. He may have been the author of some. 
The licentious king had a reputation for seizing upon and using 
the weaknesses of people. He recognized heathen religions, 
not in the broad spirit of charity, but as a political measure. 
He exercised very quick wit in finding out the real mother of 
a child whose parentage was in dispute. He may have made 
proverbs — but not by the thousand. He had the reputation 
for a certain kind of shrewd worldly wisdom. From this ded- 
ication of a wisdom-book to his name his reputation as the 
"wise man" rapidly grew and exaggerated in all directions, 
till we have him not only as the author of all Proverbs, and 
Ecclesiastes, but as religiously wise and praying at the Temple's 
dedication for nothing but wisdom. Thus does the ideal of a 
man grow and become a wondrous thing centuries after the 
man is dead. One or two memories concerning a prominent 
character are seed, in the popular thought, for an exuberant 
harvest. 

This proverb collector was also influenced by the great reform 
zeal of the prophets. What we may properly call the first book 
of Proverbs— x: to xxii: 16 — is a book of moral wisdom. It 
teaches that good conduct is wise ; that honesty, in the long 



52 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

run, is policy; that selfishness is self-defeat; that hypocrisy- 
does not conceal fraud ; that lies betray their own falsity ; that 
deceit ensnares the deceiver ; that " the Devil is an ass." Duty 
and conscience and lofty enthusiasms and ideal purposes and 
the voice of God and the spirit of self-sacrifice are not appealed 
to. It is wise to do right. 



Poetry. 

David's reputation as a psalm-writer sprang from some seed 
of tradition in these later centuries and grew to a proportion 
which rivaled Solomon's wisdom. It is not at all probable that 
David's posthumous reputation has as much historic ground 
as Solomon's. It is well-nigh impossible that he composed any 
of the psalms of our Bible. It is very difficult to trace the 
origin of any complete psalm farther back than the eighth 
century — three hundred years after the death of David. A 
few may be earlier. The great majority are later. Such psalms 
as the third, fourth, fifth, eleventh, twentieth, twenty-first and 
twenty-second read like the prophetic utterances of Micah. 
They represent the threatened and afflicted nation as a man in 
deep trouble, whose virtue God will reward when the enemies 
are driven back. The exhortations to purity, steadfastness, 
trust in God ; the awful sense of impending doom and scourg- 
ing ; the scathing rebukes of formalism, hypocrisy and unright- 
eous policy, apply with great force to the period of the prophets, 
when the very existence of both kingdoms was threatened, and 
" Israel " was actually being ruined. 



The Decalogue. 

The Ten Commandments are found in Deut. v. and in Ex. xx» 
There are slight differences which indicate separate authors, 
if not something more. In Deuteronomy we read : " Observe 
the Sabbath." In Exodus we have : " Remember 'the Sabbath." 
" Observe " has the look of an original promulgation. " Re- 
member " carries our thought back to a former promulgation. 
In Deuteronomy the phrase occurs, and is repeated : " As 
Jahveh thy god commanded thee." This carries the mind 



ISRAEL AND JTJDAH. 83 

back to the tradition that Jahveh had spoken — inclines us to 
feel that this was the original writing. The absence of that 
phrase in the Exodus version, coupled with the use of the word 
" remember," may be accounted for on the supposition that 
Exodus was much later, and that it was based on this prior 
writing of the same set of laws. In Deuteronomy we also read, 
concerning the command to keep the Sabbath: "That thy 
man servant and thy maid servant may rest, as well as thou." 
The absence of this phrase from Exodus may indicate that a 
time was come when servants had less the character of slaves 
and more the character of citizens ; which would make the 
special urgency in their behalf not only needless but somewhat 
offensive. Another significant phrase of Deuteronomy which 
is omitted in Exodus is found in the command to honor father 
and mother — " That it may go well with thee." That voices 
the prophetic belief of the eighth century in physical blessing 
as the direct result of moral feeling. That belief changed be- 
fore the Decalogue of Exodus was written, and the phrase im- 
plying it was carefully left out. 

The special things, however, which indicate different authors 
and different dates for these two versions of the moral law, are 
the different reasons given for keeping the Sabbath. Deut. 
v : 15, sanctifies the Sabbath because on that day of the week 
Jahveh delivered the Israelites from Egypt. E^x. xx : 11, sancti- 
fies the Sabbath because God rested from his work of creation 
on that day. This reason is also given in Gen. ii : 3. Such dis- 
crepancy can only be accounted for by a long lapse of time and 
the development of new theories. The Decalogue of Exodus 
is a much later document than the Decalogue of Deuteronomy 
— three centuries later, perhaps. 

The original legislation concerning the Sabbath is found in 
that primitive code of Tribal laws, The Covenant. (Ex. xxi. to 
xxiii:i9.) Inxxiii:i2, the old tribal chiefs simply declared 
that the seventh day should be a day of rest. It was not then 
a holy day — it was a mere holiday. It was not then a day of 
worship, not a sacred day, was not called the Sabbath. It was 
a simple secular rest day. They had holy days in that Tribal 
time, but they were anniversaries, (xxiii : 14-17.) Not having 
any Sabbath of worship, of course they gave no reason why it 



54 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

should be sanctified. Reasons for a sacred day are generally- 
found long after the day has slowly and unconsciously evolved 
its sacredness out of casual events and gradually developing 
customs. 

The week is a natural division of time. It corresponds, prac- 
tically, with the quarter-moon. The Canaanites, whose lan- 
guage and some of whose customs the Hebrews adopted, had 
this natural division of time, measured by the four phases of 
the moon. The Chaldeans, and, it seems, all Semitic peoples 
— the Arabians included — had this method of reckoning. This 
natural division of time, the week of seven days, is the origin 
of more things than the unstudious ever dreamed. The num- 
ber seven, so significant in Hebrew literature, borrowed all its 
mystery from the quarter-moon. Upon that simple division 
into sevens, presented by the week, the whole great structure 
of Hebrew ritualism and ceremonial observance was erected. 
Everything went by sevens. The late account of creation, 
(Gen. i : i to ii : 4,) was cast into this poetic mould, and made 
to correspond with the week of seven days. That was an idea 
so bold and so grand that the final editors of the Old Testa- 
ment deemed it worthy of the very first place in Hebrew lit- 
erature ; and so, discarding all claims of date in authorship, 
they placed it at the beginning of their Bible. 

It was perfectly natural that one day of the seven should be 
set apart as a day of rest. It was natural that a thrifty people 
like the Hebrews should work first and rest afterward. Their 
spirit of energy suggested the last day of the recurring period 
as the holiday. In this arrangement the old chiefs of the 
Tribal time showed their business principles. It was perfectly 
natural that, as the Hebrews became more and more of a re- 
ligious people, their holiday should be slowly transformed into 
a holy day. It was altogether natural, when the Temple was 
built and a priesthood began to form, that the day of rest 
should come to be a day of stated worship. Many centuries 
after that, when the first chapter of Genesis was written, it was 
the most natural thing in the world that the writer should 
ascribe to God the day of rest which man had so long observed. 
Do we not always ascribe our own best things — customs or 



ISRAEL AND JTJDAH. 33 

thoughts or feelings — to God ? As time goes on we imagine 
that the origin was not with us, but with him. 

If you compare the Covenant with the Decalogue you can- 
not escape the fact that the latter is a wondrous moral improve- 
ment upon the former. Instead of a harsh penalty attached to 
the cursing of father or mother, we have the Gospel- like ex- 
hortation to honor father and mother. Instead of severe pun- 
ishment for certain base forms of sensuality, we have the higher, 
nobler, wide-sweeping, brief, delicately expressed seventh com- 
mand. Instead of the blunt death sentence for worshiping 
other gods, we have the lengthened and reverent argument for 
worshiping Jahveh. The negative and cruel spirit of the Cov- 
enant gives large place to an affirmative and inspiring spirit in 
the Decalogue. The affirming spirit of the Gospel is not 
reached, but we have a long step toward it. There is a great 
lifting upward from barbarian threats to moral aspirations. 
This change could only be accomplished by the slowly civilizing 
processes of time. We must come this side of the Tribal Period, 
this side of Samuel's killing of Agag and David's destruction 
of Uriah and the sons of Saul, before the great command, 
"Thou shalt not kill," could be properly appreciated. We must 
come this side of Solomon for any deep appreciation of the 
seventh command. 

Indeed, the moral tone of the Decalogue will fit no period 
of Hebrew history prior to the era of the prophets. That this 
great, brief code was a gradual formation is altogether probable. 
It may have grown from slight beginnings and by slow ad- 
ditions — often re-cast and simplified, until the present form, as 
we have it in Deuteronomy, was at last the universally recog- 
nized form. We cannot be far out of the way if we date the 
Decalogue of Deuteronomy somewhere in the eighth century 
and credit the great ethical prophets with its ultimate formu- 
lating. The " Tables of Stone," and all the other traditions 
which gathered about its miraculous origin and its ancient his- 
tory, may simply be regarded as traditions. 



36 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

The Hexateuch. 

The earliest written history of Hebrew literature, of which 
we can speak with any definiteness, was " The Wars of J ah- 
veh" mentioned in Numbers xxi : 14. That old book perhaps 
began with Moses and ended with David, and was simply a re- 
cital of the exploits of those ancient martial heroes. The sub- 
stance of it was incorporated in Judges and Samuel, though 
perhaps in Joshua and the Pentateuch also some use was- made 
of its older portions. The book itself became extinct when 
these larger histories were written. 

There must have been other documents from which the great 
unknown historian of the eighth century drew, for the earliest 
parts of the Pentateuch, but they are irretrievably lost and 
wholly forgotten. The separate hero-stories, of Moses, 
Joseph, Abraham, Noah, and the older traditions reaching back 
to Adam, must have been separately wrought out, not only as 
oral accounts, but into written form, and long familiar, before 
they were gathered up and re-cast upon the framework sup- 
plied by the eighth century historian. This, however, seems to 
be a fact, — that no connected and continuous recital of the 
ancient history, from Adam to the Conquest of Canaan, was 
written until the eighth century. 

It is here that we enter upon the most difficult problem 
of Hebrew literature. If it could merely be said that the 
Pentateuch and Joshua were written in the eighth century, by 
some one who fused the oral traditions and documents of 
his day, with the fire of his own moral enthusiasm, into this 
great Hexateuch as it now stands — then the problem were 
simple. But that cannot be said. These six books (Pentateuch 
and Joshua), are not the work of one hand, nor of one time. 
In the eighth century the history of that old period was writ- 
ten. In the fifth century it was again written from a different 
standpoint. The eighth century history was a distinctly lit- 
erary production, with a moral purpose, influenced by the 
prophet spirit of the time. The fifth century history was a 
priestly production, with an ecclesiastical and ritualistic pur- 
pose, influenced by the spirit of Ezra and Nehemiah. These 
two histories were then blended, dove-tailed, braided, para- 
graph by paragraph, into one. How to separate them, untangle 



ISRAEL AND JUDAH. 57 

them, and lay the two accounts side by side as separate books, 
has been the complex, but at last successful, work of modern 
scholars. 

Before an indication of that great work is given, we must 
make certain important subtractions, that we may see just 
what the braid consists of. The Covenant (Ex.xxi.toxxiii. : 19,) 
must be put aside as a separate book. Jacob's Blessing (Gen. 
xlix.,) must be left out as another distinct book. The Deca- 
logue also stands by itself as a complete production. What is 
known as " The Law of Holiness," comprising ten chapters of 
Leviticus, (xvii. to xxvi., inclusive,) is also a complete book with in 
itself, and belongs to a time and an occasion hereafter to be 
considered. Then the entire book of Deuteronomy, with the 
exception of the Decalogue and the dying Song of Moses and a 
few other small paragraphs contained in it, is to be put aside, as 
the complete production of a still different time. All of these 
were bodily incorporated by the editor who at last moulded the 
Hexateuch into its present shape. After making all these sub- 
tractions we can apply ourselves to the problem of unbraiding 
the double history, and may arrive at some rational view of 
what was written in the eighth century. This so-called " Hex- 
ateuch " is practically a pentateuch with Deuteronomy dropped 
out and Joshua substituted. 



Double Authorship. 

The most casual reader notes that the first two chapters of 
Genesis contain two distinct accounts of creation. The second 
chapter should commence with verse 4. That verse is the 
beginning of the eighth century history. The account of crea- 
tion in Gen. i: 1, to ii : 3, inclusive, is by the writer of the 
fifth century. Chapter ii. represents the original earth as dry 
and parched : chapter i. represents it as a chaos covered with 
water. According to the second chapter, man was first created, 
then plants, then animals, then woman : while the first chapter 
gives the more scientific order — plants, animals, man and 
woman together. The second chapter tells us distinctly that 
one man and one woman were created : while the first chapter, 
with latitude for wider thinking, simply says : " Male and 
8 



38 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

female created He them." The second chapter represents the 
creation of the earth and the heavens as the work of one 
day : while the first chapter divides creation into six days of 
successive labor, with a day of rest. The second chapter has 
a very man-like conception of Deity — the Lord is pictured as 
working like a carpenter or a sculptor ; as walking, talking, 
breathing, calling aloud ; a being from whom Adam can hide 
among the bushes; a being who cannot look forward a single 
day and see what will come to pass : while the first chapter had 
a thought of God that is lofty and spiritual. He speaks from 
out the heavens, and the earth and the stars appear. All 
through the second chapter the thought is on a lower plane, 
which is conclusive evidence that it was written first. The 
more spiritual ideas of God came later. There had been a 
great intellectual development in Hebrew life between the 
writing of the second and the first chapters of Genesis. The 
writer who could say that the primitive earth was dry and that 
man appeared before animals and plants, had no faintest con- 
ception of science. When a writer states that the primitive 
earth was a waste of water one is inclined to suspect that he 
had some acquaintance with the early Greek philosophers. 
Those two theories of geography — the dry theory and the wet 
theory — the one assuming that all unknown parts of the earth 
were land, the other assuming that all unknown parts were 
water — those two theories can be traced right down through 
all geographical writing, from the early Greek authors to the 
European map-makers of the sixteenth century. Always and 
everywhere the more thoughtful have held to the water theory. 
There is no reason why the author of the first chapter should 
not have known something of Greek speculation on this sub- 
ject. Thales, Anaximander and Pythagoras had all given 
their teachings from one to two centuries before this book was 
written. 

The difference of style and thought in these first two chap- 
ters was a key with which modern scholars unlocked the 
problem of double authorship. As they looked carefully they 
found double accounts of several of the principal events in the 
book of Genesis. They found everywhere the same character- 
istic difference of style and thought. One writer has the style 



ISRAEL AND JUVAH. 39 

and thought of the eighth century prophets ; the other has the 
style and thought of the fifth century priests. 

When we come to the account of the Flood, the eighth 
century historian tells us, (Gen. vii. : 2,) that Noah took into 
the ark of "clean " beasts seven pairs each : of " unclean," one 
pair each. The fifth century historian tells us, (Gen. vi. : 19,) 
that of all he took one pair each. The fifth century writer, 
who was likely a temple priest, is not willing to confess that 
Noah had been instructed as to the sacramental difference 
between "clean" and "unclean." He is intent on making 
Moses the ecclesiastical law-giver, the great founder of the 
priesthood. He pushes every ceremonial back to Moses, but 
will only allow the most general ordinances to go farther, if he 
can help it. 

Having become sufficiently acquainted with the character- 
istics of these two writers to unbraid the book of Genesis, the 
critics proceeded with their work, making the careful division 
of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Joshua. It will be con- 
venient to designate the writer of the eighth century B. C. as 
the Prophet-historian, and the writer of the fifth century B. C. 
as the Priest-historian. 



The Prophet-Historian. 

The eighth century historian, as we might expect him to be 
in that age when the prophets were reforming everything, was 
a reformer. He writes history with a purpose. His purpose is 
to teach morality and providence, to account for everything on 
moral and providential grounds. He compels every event to 
preach a sermon, in which the good man, or the penitent man, 
or the man divinely selected for a, mission, is miraculously 
blessed of Jahveh. He believed with the prophets that all 
forms of human suffering and all forms of evil in nature are 
due directly to somebody's crime. Everything in the world 
that is not good and happy must be referred to human sin. 

His first care is to explain how men became sinners. For 
that explanation he borrowed the Persian story of the Garden. 
He is not prepared to bring in the philosophy of Dualism, 
with Persia's two gods ; he could not thus abandon the staunch 



60 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

Hebrew monotheism ; and so he makes use of a serpent — inti- 
mating that originally the serpent was a different kind of a 
creature, which was humiliated from its exalted state and made 
a crawling creature, by the curse that was put upon it. But the 
gist of the story is human disobedience to Jahveh's command. 

He then proceeds to give a moral reason for the presence of 
briars and thistles on the earth, and why it is that people must 
work for a living. It was because man sinned. The peculiar 
and especial sufferings of woman, and the fact that she is weaker 
than man, and in so much of human history has been the slave 
of man, are all accounted for on the supposition that Eve was 
the first to sin. 

In the story of Cain and Abel this Prophet-historian pictures 
a further calamity of disobedience. Jahveh's command was 
that men offer animals in worship. Fruit was under ban since 
Eve's experience. Cain was a gardener, had no animals to 
sacrifice, and did not appreciate the seriousness of the fruit 
episode sufficiently to provide himself. His fruit offering was a 
disobedience, for which Jahveh rebuked him, and Cain fell into 
a mortal jealousy of his brother. 

The tradition of a Flood was the common property of Sem- 
itic races. It was doubtless the lingering memory, through 
measureless ages, of the real old geological floods of the glacier 
period. Our Prophet-historian accounted for it on moral 
grounds. The Flood, also, was a Divine rebuke of human 
wickedness. 

Another thing to be accounted for was the differing speech 
of men. Every nation had its own language, and that fact 
created no end of difficulty, required study — study is work 
— work is evil. The Prophet-historian had an explana- 
tion. He adapted or invented the story of Babel, with 
the selfish ambition of the forefathers which was rebuked 
by the " confusion of tongues." Of course, the Priest-historian 
says nothing about that, for before he wrote the Jews had been 
in the land of Shinar, (Babylonia), and learned that the Tower 
was without foundation. 

The picturesque stories of the patriarchs, those detailed 
" lives " of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, stories that are brim- 
ming with energy and sparkling with "lessons," many of them 



ISRAEL AND JUDAH. 61 

beautiful, some of them pathetic, all of them written with a 
devout purpose, in which events must be clearly subservient to 
ideas, are from the pen of the Prophet-historian. The account 
(Gen. xviii) of the appearance of the Lord at Abraham's tent, 
the promise concerning Sarah's child, and the supper with the 
celestial guests, is what may properly be called graphic writing. 
The same account by the Priest-historian, (Gen. xvii : 15 to 19,) 
is not graphic, it is a prosaic and solemn statement. It is thus 
the two historians always differ. The detailed and exciting 
narrative of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, (Gen. 
xviii : 16 — xix : 28,) is from the Prophet-historian. The Priest- 
historian contents himself with a bare reference, (Gen. xix 129.) 
It is the Prophet-historian who gives the beautiful love-story 
of the bringing of Isaac's wife, (ch. xxiv) ; the prophetic births 
of Jacob and Esau, (ch. xxv) ; the narrative of Jacob's subter- 
fuge, (ch. xxvii) ; the account of Jacob's happy finding of 
Rachel, (ch. xxix) ; and the lively recital of Jacob's experience 
with Laban, (ch. xxx). All through these stories the Deity is 
represented, very crudely, as an angel who comes down from 
his upper abode, and walks on the earth, and argues with 
men ; who sits at the tent door in the cool of the evening, and 
eats, and is pleased with the smell of burning sacrifices ; who 
needs to make inquiry to find out if reports are true, and is 
turned from a sworn resolve by the influence of a man. It 
reads like Homer's account of the actions and feelings of a 
Greek god. It was written in the age of Homer. 

This Prophet-historian was a writer with free swinging rhet- 
oric, with keen wit and full emotion, in whose mind every old 
scrap of tradition rounded out into a well-balanced and deeply 
interesting story, with miracles galore, with tragic situations 
and breathless crises and grand denuements to satisfy the most 
exacting. The stories are not hurried, but the action is brisk 
enough for a drama, and the reader is carried delightfully from 
scene to scene without the introduction of a needless word. 
Every paragraph is brilliant with changing effects and great 
sayings. 

The story of Joseph and Moses, of how the Hebrews got 
into Egypt and how they got away, is one of the most delight- 
ful and unhistoric, one of the most ingenious because so ap- 



62 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

parently ingenuous, that was ever written. There is nothing in 
Homer to surpass it for noble imagery and poetic completeness, 
and Homer cannot be compared with it for naturalness of pre- 
sentation and elevation of sentiment. It has the charm of a 
pastoral woven about the rugged grandeur of an epic. Facts of 
history and facts of science are equally unknown to this en- 
trancing story-teller. His facile pen is never embarrassed by 
physical realities or any awkward demand of logic. He was 
illustrating the prophetic idea of morals and providence. The 
clay of tradition, so plastic under his happy touch, was moulded 
into shapes of beauty which can never lose their charm nor fail 
of arousing the world's reverent sympathy. 

From the crossing of the Red Sea to the conquest of Canaan, 
as in all the earlier parts of the Hexateuch, the stories largely 
belong to the Prophet-historian ; the ritualism to the Priest- 
historian, three centuries later. The Song of Victory, (Ex. xv : 
1-19,) may have been copied from the Book of Jasher. The 
healing of bitter waters (ch. xv: 22-26) ; the complaint against 
Moses (xvi : 1-3) ; the institutions of the Sabbath, which tra- 
dition pushed back to this fictitious date (xvi : 27-30) ; the 
battle with Amalek (xvii : 8-16); the story of Jethro, (xviii) ; 
the story of Sinai (xix) ; the story of the Golden Calf (xxxi : 
18 — xxxii : 35); the story of Jahveh's appearance to Moses 
(xxxiii : 12-23) 5 are from the pen of the Prophet-historian. 

The last six chapters of Exodus, all of Leviticus, with the 
exception of the Law of Holiness (chs. xvii-xxvi), and to Num- 
bers xiii • 17, belong to the Priest's code of the second Temple. 

The story of the spies (Num. xiii: 17-33); the prayer of 
Moses and Jahveh's reply (xiv : 11-24); the story of the Ark 
(xiv : 40-45) ; the story of Korah and his fellow-rebels (xvi : 
1-3; 12-15; 2 5-34); the smiting of the rock (xx : 3-5; 7-1 1) ; 
the messengers to Edom (xx : 14-21); the fiery serpent (xxi : 
4-9) ; the battle with the Amorites (xxi : 12.35) ; the story of 
Balak and Balaam (xxii-xxiv) ; the preparations for conquest 
(xxxii), comprise the eighth century historian's part of the 
book of Numbers. 

From his writing it is supposed that the author of Deuter- 
onomy took the command (Deut. xxv: 5-7), to build a rough 



ISRAEL AND JUDAH. 63 

stone altar and feast about it, and rejoice, while they offered 
sacrifices to Jahveh. That was very unlike the extended ritual- 
ism of the mythical Tabernacle, which the Priest-historian 
erects for these primitive times. The account of Moses' ap- 
proaching death, and his dying song, (Deut. xxxi : 16-21 ; and 
xxxi : 30— xxxii : 43,) are also reckoned as having been taken 
from the Prophet -historian, who contented himself with noth- 
ing further about Moses, except the simple sublime epitaph of 
Deut. xxxiv: 10. This dying song of Moses was probably an 
independent production, copied by the Prophet-historian. 

The book of Joshua consists of twenty-four chapters. The 
first twelve, devoted to the Conquest, are almost entirely by 
the Prophet-historian. The other twelve, devoted to the 
division of the spoil and Joshua's final exhortations, are almost 
wholly the work of the Priest-historian. 

Whoever would like to make a closer study of this problem 
of double authorship will find the exhaustive analysis, from 
which I have taken this hasty outline, in Dr. Driver's Intro- 
duction to the Literature of the Old Testament. He will find 
the problem still further complicated by the theory that this 
Prophet-history is itself a book of double authorship ; but, 
since it is very likely that the two writings and their combina- 
tion all date in the eighth century, they may be thus con- 
sidered as one. These two authors of the eighth century 
work are commonly known as Jehovist and Elohist ; but to 
avoid so much technicality I have used the term Prophet- 
history. 

Every student, every one who even pretends to be a Bible 
reader, should be familiar with the distinctions between this 
eighth century work and the Priest-code (or Priest-history), 
which was written three centuries later and braided with it. 

If the reader will get two cheap copies of the Bible, so that 
he can use both sides of the leaves, and cut out all the story 
parts as here indicated, with the connecting paragraphs or 
verses so clearly determined by Dr. Driver, and paste them in 
order in a blank book, he will have substantially the Prophet- 
history. He will be surprised to find what a complete story it 
is, how many of the breaks and jumps and doublings and dis- 
connections and misunderstandings of the common version it 



64 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

avoids. He will be surprised to find how little ritualism it 
contains; for it will be impressed upon his mind that The 
Tabernacle, with its endless laws and ordinances, had not yet 
been invented. 



Later History. 

It hardly seems probable that the historians of that great 
literary age (the 8th century B. C.) would pause with the con- 
quest of Canaan ; but there is no other historic writing of that 
age existent. We have reference, however, to other books now 
extinct, upon which the later histories of Samuel and Kings 
were doubtless founded. The eighth century writers seem to 
have considered the The Wars of Jahveh and the Book of 
Jasher sufficient for the period of the Judges and Saul and 
David. For the age of Solomon, ist Kings, xi : 41, refers to a 
book called the Acts of Solomon. That was very likely a his- 
tory of the great Temple Epoch written in the eighth century. 
The history of the northern kingdom, down almost to his own 
time, was also (probably) written by some eighth century his- 
torian, in the book so often mentioned both in ist and 2d 
Kings, and which was called The Chronicles of The Kings of 
Israel. (See ist Kings, xiv : 19; 2d Kings, xiv : 28.) The his- 
tory of the southern kingdom, probably compiled in the eighth 
century, quite as often mentioned, is called The Chronicles of 
The Kings of Judah. (See ist Kings, xiv : 29 ; 2d Kings, xx : 20.) 

Those portions of the Old Testament which we now possess 
that were in existence at the year 700 B. C. are : Jacob's Bless- 
ing ; the Covenant; the Decalogue ; Amos; Hosea ; the first 
Isaiah ; Micah ; the Song of Solomon ; a few Psalms ; the first 
collections of Proverbs ; The Dying Song of Moses ; the Prophet- 
history of the Hexateuch ; and such matter from the Wars of 
Jahveh and the book of Jasher and the Acts of Solomon and 
the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel and the Chronicles of the 
Kings of Judah, as has been incorporated in Judges, 1st and 
2d Samuel, and 1st and 2d Kings. 



JUDAH. 68 



CHAPTER V. 



JUDAH. 

Growth of The Jezvish Priesthood. 

The destruction of Israel was completed by the Assyrians in 
the year 721 B. C. The last of the great ethical prophets died 
with Isaiah about the year 700. Henceforth, during a period 
of seventy-five years, literature stagnated. If anything was 
written during that period, it has been lost. Perhaps much 
was written— nothing great enough to live. Great literature 
goes by historic epochs. When an epoch passes, nothing great 
is written until popular thought is centered upon some new 
problem. The old prophetic order of thought came to an end 
with Isaiah. The great idea of the eighth century had been 
the belief in political providence as the reward of popular mo- 
rality — the belief that if people were moral, and for that reason 
alone, God would give them national prosperity. With that 
sublime, though mistaken, conviction the prophets had worked 
great moral reforms ; but political greatness did not follow — 
scourging and destruction followed. On the heels of their 
splendid reforms came the utter defeat and practical annihila- 
tion of the northern kingdom. Ten of the twelve tribes were 
blotted out of existence. The other two tribes were made an 
Assyrian province, paying tribute for their lives. Never had 
the Hebrews risen to such high ethical standards ; never 
had their moral sense, their conduct, their domestic re- 
lations, been so commendable ; never had calamity so 
sweeping and so fatal come upon them. Moral reform 
had not secured the defeat of their enemies. God had 
not come to the rescue; had not answered their nobler living 
with military victories, but with the most dreadful losses of 
life and territory and liberty. Appreciating the failure of the 
prophet-theory of national progress, to whom should the 



66 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

people turn but to the priests ? The prophets had not been 
careless of worship, but they had been so overwhelmingly- 
zealous for good conduct that it seemed they were careless of 
worship. A multitude usually sees but one thing at a time. 
To make any matter of less importance, seems to make it of no 
importance in the eyes of a multitude. The prophets had se- 
verely criticised the deadness and formalism of priestly routine. 
The multitude does not distinguish between the abuses allowed 
by an organization and the organization itself. It seemed that 
the prophets meant to destroy the priesthood — that the prophets 
had no regard for any system of worship whatever. When ca- 
lamity came under the prophet rule, the priests were ready to 
make the most of it. Financial distress may be owing to a 
failure of crops, but the party that is out will try to make the 
dear people believe that the party in power was entirely re- 
sponsible. Political calamity, at the close of two generations 
of prophetic rule, was the priests' opportunity. The terrible 
facts of defeat and conquest and disruption were plain enough. 
The politician is always ready with his plausible theory of the 
facts. The people had trusted the prophets and were now in 
distress. They would try the priests. Perhaps God was angry 
because the forms of worship had been neglected ? That was 
the priests' explanation. The people were inclined to be- 
lieve it. 

King Hezekiah, not long after the fall of Israel, noting the 
strong demand for a change of policy, anticipating the relapse 
of popular sentiment, began the work of ecclesiastical reform. 
He not only inveighed against idolatry, destroying the heathen 
shrines and images, but he made a deadly crusade on the im- 
ages of Jahveh, for the Ten Commandments were still com- 
paratively new, and the Hebrews still made images of their 
god. That semblance of idolatry should be rooted up. This 
wholesale destruction of Hebrew idols in all the villages round 
about, had the effect to reduce the power of the village priests, 
and to enlarge the power of the Temple priesthood. Heze- 
kiah then refitted the Temple itself ; elaborated the ceremonies ; 
made Jerusalem more strictly and strikingly the centre of 
worship, as Solomon had done. Like Solomon, however, he 
recognized the existence of local sanctuaries. Hezekiah 



JUDAH. 67 

moved carefully. He would still allow neighborhood worship 
and recognize the neighborhood priests ; but he would pro- 
hibit the use of images while he conferred greater importance 
and honors on the Temple priesthood. 

That was the beginning of the new order. The priesthood 
steadily grew, and was destined to become the governing power, 
and eventually the sole political power in the nation. For the 
next three-quarters of a century the change gradually took 
place. Priests, instead of prophets, were the popular leaders 
and the king's advisers. The people were slowly converted to 
the idea that the most important thing was worship, the safest 
thing, the thing most likely to insure Divine favor. 

About the year 625 B. C, the young and ardent King Jo- 
siah, a thorough convert to the new order, felt himself in po- 
sition to make the final stroke. The people still had their local 
places of worship and their neighborhood priests. That was 
not satisfactory to the young king. A youthful, ambitious 
king, who believes in priests at all, wants a closely-organized 
priesthood, which holds the consciences of the people in its 
grasp, and whose emoluments he holds in his own grasp. 
Josiah appreciated that political failure had been largely due to 
a lack of organization. He saw that the only means of or- 
ganization was the Temple priesthood. Through that he could 
govern, and he meant to govern wisely and well, for his am- 
bitions were all of a noble and worthy kind. 

Josiah determined to utterly destroy the places of local wor- 
ship, to do away with the village priests, to make Jerusalem the 
only place of worship, and lift the Temple priesthood into su- 
preme religious authority. That was a bold and dangerous under- 
taking. The villagers would not easily give up the sacred shrines 
about which they gathered on the Sabbath day. They would not 
readily part with the priests, their neighbors and friends, who 
ministered at the altar and ministered in their homes at wed- 
ding and funeral. It was to deprive the nation of its home re- 
ligion and establish a national service. It was to destroy 
their weekly gatherings and shut them off from all religious 
exercise, except as they might travel to Jerusalem and worship 
with strangers. No king could reasonably expect that his 
people were so devoted to him as to make that sacrifice. If he 



68 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

forced such a measure upon them, he could only look for open 
rebellion. To abolish, at one fell stroke, the churches, the re- 
ligious order, the sacred associations, the inherited customs, of 
a nation, is more than any sane king, unless peculiarly provided 
for the emergency, would undertake. Josiah had devised a 
scheme by which he felt equal to this radical and highly dan- 
gerous proceeding. 



The Book of Deuteronomy. 

Josiah was not alone in devising and accomplishing this revo- 
lution. There were two others who acted with him in perfect 
concert and perfect sympathy and perfect secresy. The high 
priest and the chief scribe were essential to the success of one 
of the bravest schemes by which the destinies of a nation were 
ever determined. The high priest was the venerable and hon- 
ored Hilkiah. Shaphan was chief scribe. Kuenen suggests 
that a fourth person, Hilkiah's brilliant son, the so-called 
" prophet " Jeremiah, was also in the secret. The scheme was 
to write a code of laws, moral and ecclesiastical — a code in which 
their pet measure was emphatically proclaimed — and then 
spring that code upon the people in such way as to give it the 
force of an ancient and Divine command. 

The Temple was in a sad state of repair, and was heaped 
with rubbish. Neglected corners had accumulated the refuse 
of two generations. The new code was written. It is quite 
possible that Jeremiah's talents were engaged with Hilkiah's 
in that great work. They dictated : Shaphan wrote and 
edited. They dated their work back seven centuries, attribu- 
ting it to Moses. They chose the end of that great leader's 
career as the time. They made him utter this book as a dying 
exhortation to his people. All the accessories were duly and 
skillfully arranged. It was a stroke of genius. When com- 
pleted, the book was carefully hidden among the dust and 
mould and rubbish of the most neglected corner in the 
Temple. When the time was ripe for action, Hilkiah "dis- 
covered " it ; sought an occasion when the chief scribe was 
surrounded by his friends and told him of his wonderful 
" find." Shaphan must read it himself in order to be con- 



JUDAH. 69 

vinced. People were not close critics then. The newness 
of the parchment could easily be kept from them. Such 
a sacred " find " must only be handled by those in authority. 
When the doubtful Shaphan read it in secret, and told his fel- 
low scribes and priests that he was convinced, they accepted 
his testimony. Shaphan then took the writing to the king, 
and the king acted his part well. It was so easy for the king 
to keep the original and have a copy made for public use ! 
There was a certain woman, Huldah, of great and pious in- 
fluence, who was closely related to the royal household — a sort 
of court lady and blessed Saint Catharine in one — and she was 
made use of to win the initial assent of the multitude. All 
the better if she were not in the secret, if she were an honest 
convert to this miraculous providence. Huldah uttered a 
solemn word on the matter which had immense weight with the 
people. (See 2d Kings, xxii.) The elders and the prominent 
men were assembled in the king's presence, and the book was 
read, and the king played his own astonishment so nobly that 
the pious fraud was not detected. The elders, and then the 
people, accepted this book verily as an ancient, lost, and found, 
document, whose original words had been spoken by Moses at 
the direct command of God. On the popular acceptance of 
such authority, Josiah proceeded with his ecclesiastical revo- 
lution. 

Hilkiah's book is our book of Deuteronomy. Some ad- 
ditions have since been made, but the body of the work is the 
same. It is one of the noblest, in many regards the greatest 
and best, of the Old Testament collection — finely moral, 
deeply reverential, bravely patriotic, full of political and prac- 
tical wisdom, aspiring and inspiring. As a book of morals, it 
pleads for justice to the weak, fairness to the enslaved, gene- 
rosity to servants and strangers. It abrogates the old barbar- 
ism of punishing the family of a criminal with him ; it moder- 
ates physical penalties ; denounces usury and all manner of 
cheating; exhorts kindness and fraternity; guards the rights 
of property ; provides legal redress ; sanctifies the home ; pro- 
tects woman ; inveighs against slander and sensuality, and in 
every regard is a magnificent testimony to the moral sense and 
good purpose of its authors. 



70 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

As an ecclesiastical code, it lays great stress upon the re- 
quirement that worship shall be conducted only at one central 
and consecrated shrine ; it crushes every form of idolatry ; de- 
nounces images of Jahveh as themselves idolatrous ; provides 
for annual pilgrimages to the consecrated altar; elevates the 
ministering priests of the altar to membership in the nation's 
court of final appeal, and makes their word and person sacred. 
Priests are limited to the tribe of Levi ; they are to be sepa- 
rated from the people and form a distinct class ; their living is 
provided at public expense ; if the country priests will come 
up to the central shrine, they shall still be recognized as priests 
and provided for in the legal community of the priesthood — 
otherwise they shall be held as outlaws. Thus was the priestly 
order established on a firm and enduring basis. The nation 
and the religion were united, and the priesthood "was become 
an integral part of the government. 

The people bowed sorrowfully but submissively to this law, 
which they regarded as God's ancient word, long forgotten ; and 
the work of destruction proceeded. The village altars were 
torn down and the rebellious priests were killed. The Temple 
was repaired, re-decorated, and the solemn service again took 
on a new grandeur. Then a great religious jubilee was held, 
and the new regime was gloriously established. 



The shrewdest and wittiest thing in the book of Deuteronomy, 
if not in the entire Bible ; a brilliant, captivating, knock-down 
argument which it were difficult to parallel anywhere, is that 
question and answer in the last two verses of chapter xviii. 
" And if thou say in thine heart, how shall we know the word 
which the Lord hath not spoken ? . . . . When a prophet 
speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor 
come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken ; 
but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously : thou shalt 
not be afraid of him." 

The priestly authors of Deuteronomy are anxious to main- 
tain the principle of inspiration. They are even anxious to 
have it believed that prophets, as well as priests, are inspired. 
The prophets were held in great honor. The very word, 
prophet, was reverenced, notwithstanding the mistake of theory 



JUDAH. 71 

which the great prophets had made. The names of Isaiah and 
Micah and Amos and Hosea were honored and beloved, as 
were the names of David and Moses. These priestly authors 
of Deuteronomy would not array themselves against that pop- 
ular devotion to great and reverenced names. They adopted 
that common sentiment, paid it court, and pleased the people 
by making Moses declare himself not only as the author of the 
priesthood, but also as God's great first prophet. It was in 
the character of a prophet they compelled Moses to utter this 
noble book they had written. Moreover, young Jeremiah 
assumed the double role of priest-prophet. Son of the high 
priest, joint author, mayhap, of Deuteronomy, he called him- 
self a prophet. It was probably to himself that Jeremiah 
secretly referred when he suggested the fifteenth verse of this 
chapter xviii. All the dignity and devotion and Divine authority 
and popular reverence in that word prophet should be turned 
to account in establishing the new priestly order. 

The people must be made to understand, however, that the 
great prophets had been mistaken in one essential regard. 
The prophets had assumed, and were commonly believed, to 
have spoken by Divine command. That principle must be 
sacredly maintained ; for Jeremiah, as a prophet, meant to up- 
hold this priestly code of his father's and his own construc- 
tion. But a line of distinction must be drawn. The great 
prophets had persistently said one thing that was a mistake — 
their theory ot national greatness as the Divine reward of 
simple morality. It must be shown that the great prophets did 
not always speak by inspiration ; that they sometimes trans- 
cended the bounds and spake their own thoughts, presump- 
tuously. Hilkiah and Jeremiah made a rule by which the com- 
mon people could determine for themselves the particular 
things, in any prophetic utterance, which were not spoken by 
the Lord. What a plain, grand, keen, sarcastic rule of judg- 
ment they made ! " Wait, and see whether the thing comes to 
pass : if it does, the prophet was inspired ; if it does hot, the 
prophet spake presumptuously." Jeremiah did not appreciate 
what a sarcasm that would come to be on some of his own 
later predictions: notably, his prediction, twenty years after- 
ward, of the restoration of the ten tribes. Few speakers or 



72 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

writers ever do appreciate that their keenest rule of judgment 
is likely to prove a two-edged sword. 

What an effectual shutting off this was of all prophesy that 
related to a distant future ! If any prediction was laid a hun- 
dred years in advance, with what irony would the people say : 
" We shall wait, and see if the thing come to pass, before we 
accept it as a word the Lord hath spoken." How extremely 
witty the rule becomes wheh theologians explain what will 
take place in the future world — wait : " If the thing follow not, 
nor come to pass, it is a word which the Lord hath not spoken." 
Of all of this Hilkiah and Jeremiah were not thinking. They 
were thinking of history. They made a rule by which to test 
the inspiration of the prophetic utterances of the eighth and 
seventh centuries. It had the effect they desired. The people 
accepted their practical test. The things uttered by Micah and 
Isaiah concerning the national reward of morals had not come 
to pass ; therefore, it was not a word which the Lord had 
spoken. The prophets had spoken it presumptuously. Their 
victory was gained and the priestly order seated on the throne 
of popular approval. 

What shall we say of this scheme for giving the new code of 
laws a fictitious authority by ascribing it to Moses? It was a 
sort of military strategem. Without some such manoeuvre 
Josiah could never have worked the revolution he de- 
sired. Popular superstition would accept and obey a law thus 
promulgated. Had it been announced as a new law, it would 
have been the signal for rebellion and massacre. Then, as 
now, the ancient was sacred. People believed that in the olden 
time God walked the earth and talked face to face with his 
servants. It was, as Kuenen calls it, a pious fraud, but the 
purpose in it was good. The king and the high priest did not 
do this thing for their personal gain, but for the public welfare. 
They saw nothing wrong in that kind of a deception. They 
were not shocked by any suggestion of literary " forgery " as 
we of the nineteenth century would be. That special feature 
of the moral sense was yet undeveloped. It was the year 621, 
exactly one hundred years after the fall of Israel, that the book 
of Deuteronomy was made public and the priestly revolution 



JUDAE. 73 



effected. Josiah reigned thirteen years longer, and they were 
years of peace and prosperity — a Divine confirmation, in the 
popular estimate, of his revolutionary work. 



The Occasion of Other Books. 

The Assyrians, who had destroyed Israel and restricted Judah, 
were deeply feared and hated, looked upon as the chief ene- 
mies of God and righteousness. In the year 607 the great bar- 
barian hero, Cyaxares, defeated the Assyrians and demolished 
their wonderful city of Nineveh. The book of Zephaniah, 
written in the form of a prophesy, as if before the event, is 
most probably a commemoration of the event. The Assyrians 
were growing more and more bold. Had they defeated Cyax- 
ares they would have wrought untold havoc. Let Judah be- 
ware — God may not spare them so mercifully again ; but now 
the hated Assyrian was laid in the dust — let Judah be thankful 
and faithful ! The book of Nahum is a poem of exultation, 
magnificently conceived and worded, over the fall of Nineveh. 
It is a classic shout of joy and deliverance. 

The first nine chapters of the book of Proverbs, what may be 
properly called the Second Book of Proverbs, belongs to this 
period. The peace that comes of wisdom, and the destruction 
of the enemies of righteousness, are finely pointed by the 
reign of Josiah and the fall of Nineveh. 



Jeremiah. 

This great book is a series of productions. Chapter i. is a 
remnant of some early discourse concerning the Assyrians. 
Chapters ii.-iv. are a group of exhortations against idolatry. 
Chapters vii.-x. are another group of discourses against 
unfaithfulness to the Temple worship. Chapters xi.-xii. 
are a plea for the sacred recognition of the book of Deute- 
ronomy. Chapter xvii. is a plea for the sanctity of the 
Sabbath. Chapter xxiii. is a rebuke of the prophets who are 
opposed to the priestly order beloved by Jeremiah. Chapters 
xxx.-xxxiii. are a great unfilled prediction that Israel shall be 
restored. Now that Assyria is humbled, Jeremiah expects that 

10 



74 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

God will release the ten tribes and bring them back and unite 
them with Judah in one loving kingdom. Jeremiah's prophe- 
cies against Babylon and his predictions of its destruction were 
(if not entirely composed) re-written and amended and made 
more specific after the events took place. His predictions, in 
general terms, of the captivity are not improbably dated before 
the event. That had been threatened for many years. 

After the defeat of the Assyrians, the Jews made common 
cause with Egypt. Nebuchadnezzar was at war with Egypt, 
and his victory over the Egyptian army in 604 left the Jews de- 
fenceless. The Jews paid tribute to the Babylonian monarch, 
but for some offence he appeared before Jerusalem in 597 and 
carried off many important citizens as hostages for submissive 
behavior. In 589 there was a revolt of the hot-heads against 
Babylonian rule, and then it was perfectly plain to any sensible 
man that Nebuchadnezzar might seal their doom any day. The 
fatal day came, when that monarch had leisure for so small an 
enterprise, in 586. The towns were demolished, Jerusalem was 
put to the sword, the Temple destroyed, terrible vengeance was 
wreaked on the king and his princes, the chief families were 
carried into captivity, and the kingdom which began with Saul 
was forever at an end. 



Conflicting Theories of Providence. 

Those eleven years between the first scourging by Nebuchad- 
nezzar and the final destruction of Jerusalem — 597 to 586 — 
were troublous times, which puzzled all thinkers and gave rise 
to many different theories of providence. Jeremiah looked 
forward to still deeper calamities, as the punishment for idol- 
atry. Habakkuk, on the other hand, whose book was written 
about the year 590, believes that the nation has been punished 
sufficiently, and that Jahveh will now assist them to destroy 
all their enemies — even Nebuchadnezzar, should he again 
come against them. Thus did the prophets differ; and the 
people doubtless said : " Let us wait, and see which of these 
things will come to pass." 

The prophetic idea of the eighth century had been that God 
would give national success in return for moral conduct. The 



JUDAH. 75 

priestly idea of the seventh century had been that God would 
give national prosperity in return for the faithfulness of Temple 
worship. The preaching of the prophets and the moral reforms 
were followed by the destruction of Israel. The work of the 
priests and the ecclesiastical reforms were now to be followed 
by the destruction of Judah. Both theories of providence, or of 
securing providential favor, had failed. The old question came 
up afresh : " Why does God allow, or send, this terrible suf- 
fering ? On what principle does God punish the nation ?" 

During these last years of the kingdom when utter calamity 
threatened, and the fate of Judah seemed as dreadful as the 
fate of Israel, a wonderful book was written. 

Some great genius among them reasoned thus : " If punish- 
ment is not averted for the sake of morality, nor for the sake 
of faithful worship, then God must have an unrevealed reason 
for allowing men to suffer." A new theory of providence must 
be devised. The genius thought he had an illumination. Suf- 
fering was not, or might not be, of the nature of punishment. 
Suffering and punishment had always been thought of as one. 
Our genius made a distinction. There might be some other 
purpose than punishment in suffering. There might even be a 
kind purpose in it. Suffering might be God's way of testing 
and developing the virtues of men and nations. This delight- 
ful hint grew into a positive conviction and took shape in a 
masterpiece of literature. 

Let us bring the prophet's theory of rewards and punish- 
ments clearly to mind. They were sadly mistaken, but it was 
a mistake of the head not of the heart. Their theory was all 
wrong, but they were not to blame. Nothing but science could 
reveal the truth of this matter, and science was unborn. Be- 
fore the day of science it was impossible that men should 
avoid mistakes, of any and every kind, on the question of 
providence. The prophets believed that God rewarded and 
punished the private virtues and vices of people with material 
and political blessing or cursing. If men were pure and truth- 
ful and generous they should have abundant crops and splendid 
markets, with national peace and prosperity. If men were im- 
pure and selfish and cruel their crops would be blasted with 
frost and mildew, their flocks would be destroyed with disease, 



76 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

the enemy would come upon them with disastrous war. They 
believed that God wielded the laws of nature arbitrarily, con- 
stantly changing the weather, introducing or averting disease, 
stirring up nations to plunder and bloodshed or thwarting their 
wicked schemes, that in these physical ways he might reward 
or punish the Israelites. 

To people who have even a primary understanding of sci- 
ence, all that is very absurd, but that was the prophet's con- 
ception of providence. Everywhere and constantly the proph- 
ets appealed to these physical rewards for morality and these 
material calamities for vice. Sometimes, of course, the proof 
of their doctrine was not very clear. It often happened that 
when people had been especially good the crops were bad. It 
often happened that disease and desolation did not follow a 
period of moral debasement. The best men in the neighbor- 
hood were sometimes the greatest sufferers. The wickedest 
men were sometimes the most prosperous. The author of one 
of the psalms frankly confesses that he almost lost faith in 
God when he saw the prosperity of the wicked. Such things 
were hard to explain, but the prophets held on to their theory. 

Then the priestly theory came in — that God rewarded faith- 
ful worship and punished idolatry. All calamities were re- 
ferred to idolatry, or unfaithfuless to the established worship. 
For a century that theory had been growing. For twenty 
or thirty years it had been eloquently and constantly pleaded 
by Jeremiah, side by side with the prophetic theory. At last 
the old-time Shakespeare arose and put forth an entirely new 
theory of providence. 



The Book of Job. 

It seems most probable that this immortal drama was 
written in the impending doom, when Nebuchadnezzar was 
likely to sweep their nation out of existence, any day. It ap- 
plies to the national, and equally to individual, fortunes. How 
we should rejoice to know the name of its author ; not because 
his theory is half true, but because he was a man of lit- 
erary genius, because he was earnest about it and so loyal to 



JUDAH. 77 

his own conviction. Also, because he introduced a new and 
consolatory element of thought, lifted the common doctrine of 
providence to a higher level, brought it one long step on the 
way toward reason. 

You know the story. A good man suffers calamity. Be- 
cause he suffers calamity his friends conclude he is a bad man. 
He protests his innocence and challenges them to examine his 
conduct. When they find nothing wrong in his actions they 
declare he must have sinned sectetly. When he protests the 
purity of his soul before God, then they conclude he must have 
sinned unconsciously. Of course he must be a sinner or these 
calamities would not have come upon him. Day after day of 
explanation, argument, appeal, exhortation, but neither side 
will budge. The friends hold to their theory, which the 
prophets of two centuries have been teaching. Job protests 
his absolute innocence. At last our author makes an explana- 
tion. He says the general rule is that suffering is punishment 
for sin ; but this case is an exception. A really good man suf- 
fers. What then may we conclude ? What was this exceptional 
suffering for? It was God's method of proving Job's faith, of 
testing his loyalty and fortitude, that by means of suffering his 
virtues might shine the more brightly. 

That certainly was an advance on the old hard-and-fast 
doctrine that frost and mildew are the direct results of sin, and 
that prosperity is God's acknowledgment of virtue. That book, 
written in the very shadow of their great national calamity, 
gave popular hope. Perhaps God was only testing the nation's 
endurance and faith. If they remained true all calamities 
would pass by, great restoration and prosperity would come 
again, as in Job's case. Of course that is not scientific and it 
is not historic. God does not wield the forces of nature or the 
destinies of a dozen nations arbitrarily that may punish the 
sins or reward the virtues of the people in one particular na- 
tion. That new idea, however, that explanation given by the 
author of Job, worked a thorough and lasting revolution in 
the popular thought of the Jews. During all the six hundred 
years that follow, to the time of Christ, we find it the dominant 
idea in the Jewish conception of providence. Suffering hence- 
forth had a new meaning to the Jew. It was not wrath half so 



78 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

much as it was love. God was testing their faith, purifying their 
souls in the flame of grief ; and the suffering itself was a sort 
of promise and pledge of greater prosperity to come. " Prov- 
idence by suffering " soon came to be the popular belief. In 
less than a century we find the complete revolution of ideas 
has been worked. Instead of saying, with the old prophets, 
that loss and misfortune and pain are the punishments of sin, 
men began to say: "Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth.' 



IN CAPTIVITY. 79 

CHAPTER VI. 
In Captivity. 

The Heroism of the Priests. 

When Judah was carried into captivity the priests were the 
the nuclei of organization, the centres of influence, the teach- 
ers and moulders of thought. They alone could hold their en- 
slaved brethren together and make them think and act in con- 
cert. A few of the more prominent families were taken to 
the city of Babylon. The masses were assigned small districts 
of land, here and there, which they must cultivate, not only to 
support themselves, but to help support the king's army and 
his court. Ancient monarchs made financial use of their cap- 
tives. In those farming districts Jews and Babylonians were 
free to form such friendships and social relations as they 
pleased. Kindly association was even encouraged. It was the 
policy of conquerors to make contented and loyal citizens of 
their captives. Out of this cordiality were two results which 
greatly disturbed the priests, and seriously threatened the fu- 
ture existence of Judaism — intermarriage with Babylonians, 
and desertion to Babylonian religion. The Jews had full privi- 
lege of their own religion ; but that generous toleration per- 
haps inclined them a little more kindly toward the religion of 
their conquerors. Babylonia was an older, richer, more artistic 
and magnificent country, by far, than their own Canaanite 
hills ; and this outward prosperity and greatness also capti- 
vated the sympathies of the less patriotic captives. The priests 
had their hands full of work in holding their people aloof from 
heathendom. The privilege of their own worship, however, 
was the priests' opportunity. Almost all heathen conquerors 
allowed captives that privilege. Christian nations set the ex- 
ample of denying it, and of cruelly persecuting all who would 
not conform to the religion of the conqueror. In whatever 
concerned the religion of the conquered, Christian nations have 
been peculiarly barbarous, while heathen nations were nobly 



80 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

generous. The worst of the Roman tyrants did not persecute 
Christians or Christianity per se, they persecuted individual 
Christians, and then tried to stamp out the Christian religion, 
only because Christians were disobedient to the civil law. 
Rome had an established religion, which was a part of its civil 
procedure, to which it demanded outward and formal obedi- 
ence. That obedience was made as formal and as easy on the 
Christian conscience as the most generous interpretation of 
the law could make it ; but Christians regarded the lightest 
semblance of recognition as idolatry. The refusal to utter the 
name of a Roman god in making oath sowed the seeds of dis- 
loyalty and rebellion ; and it was for that un-Roman and re- 
bellious influence, not for their Christian devotion, that they 
were persecuted. Jews in the city of Rome, primitive He- 
brews in Egypt, Jews in Babylonia, were allowed all religious 
freedom that any stretch of the civil law could grant them. 
Christian nations and Christian rulers began the systematic 
search for and remediless torture of personal and private non- 
conformity—a search and a torture that reached to the secret 
thoughts and feelings of individuals. 

The Jews were carefully nurtured in their own faith, in the 
land of exile, by the priests who moved to and fro amongst 
them. It shows the power of priestly organization and the 
zeal of priestly devotion that the vast majority of Jews were 
kept true to their faith, in that land from which there was no 
reasonable hope of escape; that land in which, to all appear- 
ance, they and their descendants must forever remain as cap- 
tives — until they chose to remain as converted and loyal citi- 
zens. Never were a set of priests busier, more determined, 
more enthusiastic, than the Jewish priests in exile. Nowhere 
else in human history does the name and the work of the priest 
shine forth more honorably. The patriot in exile is always a 
grand sort of man ; doubly grand when he can see no way out 
of exile ; when he holds grimly to his principles and waits and 
faintly hopes. 

If the question is asked, why the Ten Tribes were lost, ab- 
sorbed by the Assyrians, made over into citizens of the con- 
quering nation, this is the reply : There were no priests 
among them of sufficient ability and influence and purpose to 



IN CAPTIVITY. 81 

hold them separate and coherent from their conquerors. They 
did not retain any tribal or national or religious organization. 
They did not keep their separateness from the heathen. They 
lost the sense of patriotism, lost the love of their ancestral 
faith, lost their Hebrew peculiarities of belief and practice, 
mingled with Assyrians, deserted each other, and by inter- 
marriages became part and parcel of Assyria, just as the chil- 
dren of Germans cease to be a German colony, forget their 
language even, and become Americans, in the forests of Michi- 
gan or on the prairie farms of Illinois. The ten " lost tribes," 
as if they wandered somewhere, maintaining their Israelite 
identity, is one of the amusing fictions of history. They did 
not wander; they mixed blood with the Assyrians and were 
absorbed. The northern kingdom was carried away before the 
priesthood came into power, and the prophets had no organ- 
izing and cohering ability. Had the priesthood been as deeply 
intrenched in Israel at 721 B.C. as it was in Judah at 586 B.C. 
the Ten Tribes would have been kept separate and apart from 
their conquerors, as the two tribes were in Babylonia, and would 
have returned to Canaan, at some juncture of national events, 
as the Jews did. Had the prophets maintained ascendency until 
the year 586, the priesthood still as weak and uninfluential 
then as in 721, the Babylonian captivity would have been final ; 
the Jews would have been absorbed ; would have become citi- 
zens of the heathen nation, embracing the heathen religion ; 
never would have returned to Palestine ; the Hebrew name 
would have ceased from the earth ; a great part of the Bible 
would never have been written ; what was written would have 
been lost and forgotten ; Jesus would never have been born, 
Christianity would not have existed, and the history of the 
world would have been very different. When Josiah and Hil- 
kiah and Shaphan and Jeremiah worked their ecclesiastical re- 
form, and established their book of Deuteronomy as a book of 
Moses, God-inspired, they had no dream of the wonderful re- 
sults which waited their action. Looking back upon the ab- 
sorption of the ten tribes, the priests determined that Judah 
should not repeat the experience, but should maintain its re- 
ligious identity and its race characteristics in exile, should be 
kept united and distinct, on the hope that somehow deliverance 



82 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

might come. Whether or not they felt much of it in their own 
hearts, they diligently inculcated belief in deliverance, as the 
greatest element of its possibility. That belief would keep 
the people in readiness, if any chance of escape should ever be 
presented. Wearily on from year to year, and from decade to 
decade, those faithful priests inculcated the Hebrew religion, 
denounced heathenism, tried to prevent intermarriage, bound 
the hearts of their people with memories of the fatherland, 
nurtured the feeble flames of hope. Theirs was a most diffi- 
cult and delicate task. They must preserve friendly relations 
with their Babylonian neighbors or they might bring on per- 
secution, but they must, if possible, prevent intimate friend- 
ship ; they must oblige their people to feel as strangers in a 
strange land, submissive but not contented. 



Ceremonial Exclusiveness. 

The plan which they adopted for this most difficult work 
may be characterized as the device of bigoted humility. The 
Jews must live on good terms with their heathen neighbors, 
but must be effectually separated from all vital sympathy with 
them. This could be done only by making the Jews them- 
selves a peculiar people, by obliging them to submit to certain 
odd and estranging ceremonies, by impressing them with the 
sacred belief that these oddities were divine, were the secret 
seal upon them as Heaven's favorites. They must be made to 
humiliate themselves and then to take the bigot's pride in their 
humiliation. They must bow to rigorous forms, and must 
love those forms as Jahveh's pledge of acceptance. They 
must be made sectarian, fanatical, exclusive. He is not much 
of a philosopher who fails to understand that personal humil- 
iation, when connected with religious devotion, is an exhaust- 
less source of bigotry. Never were such bigots, such examples 
of vanity, on earth, as the monks, nuns, hermits, priests, of the 
middle ages, who put all manner of humiliation and suffering 
upon themselves with the belief that their self-torture was 
especially pleasing to God. The Catholic Church has been 
eminently wise, (with that kind of wisdom,) in devising pecu- 
liar forms by which to foster at once the devotion and the 



IN CAPTIVITY. 8 3 

bigotry of ignorance. The Salvation Army has made a power 
of petty peculiarities. The name, the dress, the drill, the 
sanctified slang, the tambourine, the splashing through muddy 
streets, the falling down to prayer in a railway coach at the 
appointed hour, the red jackets, the flaming letters of their 
profession — all these take them apart, commit them, advertise 
them, make the world look upon them as odd — ignorance is 
always ready to credit oddity with sanctity — willing to feel that 
its own oddity is sacred. The more of a sacrifice it is to adopt 
these peculiarities, the more strongly the devotees are bound 
by them, and the more bigoted they become in parading them. 



The Law of Holiness. 

Chapters xvii.-xxvi. of Leviticus constitute what is known as 
the Law of Holiness, which was written by the priests in exile. 
Like Deuteronomy, it was ascribed to Moses. All laws were 
ascribed to Moses, just as all proverbs to Solomon, and all 
psalms, (except those of very late date,) to David. The Law of 
Holiness was written as if a code for the wandering Hebrews 
of the wilderness when they should enter Canaan, but of course 
it applied to the present situation in Babylonian exile, just as 
Deuteronomy applied to the ecclesiastical necessities of Josiah's 
reform. Its laws of morality were commands to abstain from 
those flagrant vices practiced by the Babylonians. Its repeated 
threatenings against the worship of heathen gods, especially 
Molech, were vividly practical. Its stern requirements of # Sab- 
bath observation met the religious needs of the exile in a 
masterly way. Its hyper-cautious regulations for the sanctity 
of priests gave those leaders a deeper hold on the common 
regard. Its demand that no sacrifice should be made, no wor- 
ship conducted, except by priests, re-enforced the -provisions of 
Deuteronomy. Its emphatic prohibition of the use of blood — 
stipulating that the blood of any creature slain for food should 
be poured on the ground and covered with dust — was, at least, 
a striking peculiarity. Its form of purification — to wash one's 
clothes and bathe one's body and remain alone until evening, 
when any ceremonial law had been broken — was another pecu- 
liarity. Its requirements that Jews should not tattoo or mark 



84 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

their flesh, should not shave any part of their heads, nor trim off 
the corners of their beards, nor wear any garments of mixed 
wool and linen, were direct strokes at the fashions and fancies of 
Babylonia, Its provisions for a Sabbatic year (the 7th) and 
a year of Jubilee (the 50th), were pictures of the happy time 
when they should return to Canaan. The final chapter (the 
xxvi.) was a promise of great victory and prosperity if they would 
be faithful. To keep all the rules and ordinances of this 
Law of Holiness, with " the affliction of their souls " — fasting 
and public mourning and penances — while they also dealt justly 
and generously by " the strangers," would make them a peculiar 
people, oddly dressed and barbered, with odd ceremonies ; so 
that while the Babylonians respected them, they would remain 
socially distinct. The faithful would become proud of their 
oddities as the requirements and pledges of their god. This 
humility and separateness and bigotry would preserve their 
unity of race. 

Zechariah XII. — XIV. 

must have been written very soon after the Law of Holiness, 
with which it is connected by the final verses. Of course it is 
put back a little, as though it were a prediction of the captivity 
as well as the return ; but that was the common style of writing 
and is to be expected on all occasions. All prophets assumed 
to speak for God, and it was more impressive to speak forward 
toward an event than to relate accomplished facts. In many 
cases* there was perhaps no intention to deceive, or give a 
wrong impression as to the date of authorship. The prophetic 
view of coming events was adopted as the more commanding 
style. 



Ezekiel 
was a priest, taken captive as one of the hostages in 597. After 
five years, he tells us, he began to preach, and at the end of 
another twenty years, in 572, began to write. The first twenty- 
four chapters of his book refer to the destruction of Jerusalem 
— as if written before the event, though at least fourteen years 
after it. Chapters xxv. — xxxii. are launched against the ene- 






IN CAPTIVITY. 88 

mies of Judah, and consist of great and startling threats of 
vengeance. Ezekiel's threats are always startling, even if the 
greatness sometimes takes on the character of pomposity. He 
had the native genius, but not the training, for a poet. His 
figures are overdone and his ideas extravagant ; but his 
heart was right. He was a patriot priest whose fire must have 
done more than we can easily understand in keeping the hopes 
of the exiles aflame. Chapters xxxiii.-xlviii. are glowing 
dreams of the restoration ; dreams as wild as they are glowing. 
Nothing that even faintly resembles the facts does he foresee. 
His vision is an awful conflagration of war in which the Jews 
will be miraculousl)* strengthened to meet and vanquish the 
combined nations of Asia. He sees the enemy destroyed in 
such immense numbers that it will take seven months to bury 
the dead, and the conquerors will need no other firewood for 
seven years than the measureless cords of spear shafts and 
arrows and bows they may gather from the battlefield. That 
is the kind of prophecy we have before the event : prophecy 
that is written after the event always tallies better with the 
facts. This Munchausen battle is very different from the quiet 
marching home of the unarmed exiles under heathen escort. 

Ezekiel differs from all who went before him in his theory of 
providence. Prophets had promised God's help in answer to 
morality. Priests had pledged the divine favor in response to 
faithful worship. Habakkuk and Jeremiah differed greatly as 
to amount of scourging due the sins of God's people. Job 
teaches that punishment is sometimes the testing of faith and 
a means of establishing the good on firmer ground. Ezekiel 
cuts loose from all these theories and gives a new theory. God 
will restore the Jews to Canaan, not because they repent or 
cease idolatry or live righteously, but of his own free grace. 
The result of that unmerited kindness, or kindness distinct 
from and not dependent on human merit, will be the deeper re- 
pentance and purer living of God's people. This theory fore- 
shadows the New Testament idea that " We love him because 
He first loved us." It is the most fatherly thought of God yet ' 
hinted in Hebrew literature. 

Ezekiel's fervid and glorious description of the new city and 
temple which the Jews will erect after their return from cap- 



86 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

tivity is in keeping with the dream of their universal victory in 
war. It is so magnificently unlike what they really did that no 
critic will ever be tempted to deny it was a prediction. His 
final vision of the restoration of the twelve tribes to their 
tribal portions, which assumes that the absorbed ''ten tribes" 
will be gathered from Assyria again, — that vision of things 
which never did and never could take place, of course rested 
on his prior vision of Judah's vast military operations. When 
you really find a prediction of specific events, it puts the theory 
of prophetic foresight to a melancholy test. 



Lamentations. 

This book of five chapters is simply a collection of five short 
poems which bewail the destruction of Jerusalem and the cap- 
tivity. Chapter i. concerns the deserted and ruined city, which 
the poet speaks of in the third person, as a widow. Then he 
changes the figure and makes the city bewail its own calami- 
ties, in the first person, as a deserted lover. Chapter ii. repre- 
sents Mt. Zion as a father and Jerusalem as his daughter, un- 
protected, against whom the Lord himself hurled vengeance. 
Chapter lii. refers to the exiles, who are personified as the 
writer himself, and whom Jahveh is afflicting : " I am the man 
that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath." His sorrows 
are pathetically related. He pleads piteously for help, closing 
the song with a prayer for cursing upon his enemies ; " Thy 
curse upon them ! Persecute and destroy them in anger from 
under the heavens of the Lord !" Patriotic, but not Gospel-like. 
Chapter iv. is another wail for the sufferings of the exiles. If 
this be taken as a portrayal of their physical condition it is 
greatly exaggerated ; but it is no exaggeration of the feelings 
of the faithful. Chapter v. is the people's prayer of penitence 
and plea for mercy. 

The author of these poems is unknown. It was an un- 
founded tradition, several centuries afterwards, which attrib- 
uted them to Jeremiah. They were probably written soon 
after the arrival of the exiles in Babylonia. The significant 
thing in them is the personifications in the first and third 
songs. 






IN CAPTIVITY. 87 

" The Suffering Servant." 

Every new literary style is a precedent. The prophets all 
followed the early prophetic style of relating history as a divine 
voice speaking forward into the event. The style of Lamenta- 
tions, following some of the eighth century psalms, was taken 
up again and made very powerful in the second Isaiah. That 
style — personification — was also occasionally adopted by the 
elder prophets, but only briefly, as passing figures of speech. 
In the second Isaiah (the last twenty-seven chapters of Isaiah,) 
the style becomes a prevailing and sustained method. The 
Jews in exile are Jahveh's suffering \ but faithful servants. 
They suffer for the sins of the whole nation, for all past in- 
iquities. Following Lamentations the second Isaiah makes 
these exiles "the man that hath seen affliction," only Isaiah 
speaks of them in the third person instead of the first. He 
conceives of this afflicted servant as a sacrifice, a sin offering 
unto God, by which the crimes of all the national history are 
to be atoned for. The prophet speaks for the people who 
have not been carried into exile, and the exiles are this 
"afflicted man," "smitten of God," " wounded for our trans- 
gressions/' "bruised for our iniquities," who "hath borne our 
griefs and carried our sorrows," by whose "stripes we are 
healed." This man of grief (the exiles) is declared to have 
gone as a " lamb to the slaughter." " It pleased the Lord to 
bruise him and make his soul an offering for sin. God will see 
the travail of his soul and be satisfied." He is both the sacri- 
fice and the priest. " He poured out his soul unto death," and 
" he made intercession for the transgressors." 

The first Isaiah taught that all Hebrews must suffer for their 
sins. In the light of the fact that only a portion of the peo- 
ple — the prominent families — were carried into captivity, the 
second Isaiah concludes that these select ones are punished 
vicariously for the whole Hebrew race. He believes this is 
God's final judgment upon his chosen people ; that all past 
sins of the race will be atoned for in this terrible affliction ; 
that God's justice, or anger, will be satisfied ; the exiles will 
return ; Jerusalem will be re-established, and peace shall flow 
like a river. 



88 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

The greatest literary outrage of history has been the Chris- 
tian application of these words of the second Isaiah to Christ. 
The first seven verses of ch. lxiii. do not refer to the suffering 
servant. These declarations are put into the mouth of God 
himself. He it is who has "trodden the winepress alone," who 
"will trample the people in his fury," and "tread them down 
in anger." 

Psalms. 

A few of the Psalms, such as xiv. (which is the same as 
liii.) xc„ cxxxvii., were probably written toward the end 
of the captivity ; but the larger portion of these poetical 
effusions belong to a later age. " They compose," says Kuenen, 
"the hymn-book of the second temple." We are strikingly 
confronted with the laxity of ancient criticism when the 
hymns of Ezra's time and later are ascribed to David. A mis- 
take of six hundred years in the date of writing is not unu- 
sual, however, in the chronology of Biblical literature. Even 
that is not so bad, not so pitiable, as the modern determination 
that the old mistake shall stand as a test of denominational 
and Christian loyalty, and that the facts shall be stamped as 
destructive criticism. 



Obadiah. 

This brief discourse, obscure, seems like a remnant of some 
larger work, and was probably written during the captivity. It 
tells of speedy deliverance, and may have been a mere letter 
written from the leading priest of one community of exiles to 
the leader of some other community, after the coming of Cyrus 
gave them great hopes. 



History. 
The books of Judges, Samuel and Kings all appear to have 
been written during the exile. Into these works were copied 
the gist of the older works — The Wars of Jahveh, The Acts of 
Solomon, The Chronicles of the Kings of Israel, The Chronicles 
of the Kings of Judah. 



IN CAPTIVITY. 89 

It may be a venture to say copied. Those books may have 
been destroyed in the burning temple. These may have been 
written largely from memory of them ; the lapses filled out by 
tradition. The books of that day were bulky and heavy ox- 
hides. It is not probable that many such were carried away 
by the captives. 

A Shout of Triumph. 

Chapters xxxiv. and xxxv. of Isaiah, belong neither to the 
first nor the second Isaiah, but were composed between the 
taking of Babylon by Cyrus and the return of the Jews to 
Jerusalem. They are a mighty shout of triumph for the people 
who have waited and suffered, in whom the hope deferred has 
made the heart sick, but who now actually see the day of 
deliverance and are filled with joy to intoxication. 



Cyrus, the Deliverer. 

Help came at last, as it so often does, from an unexpected 
quarter. When the Jews had been forty years in exile they be- 
gan to hear of Cyrus, the young Persian rebel, who revolted 
against and then overthrew his own king and was fast sweep- 
ing the armies of. the north before him. He might sweep down 
upon Babylon. There was hope in any change. Cyrus came, 
and there was great fighting ; but the Babylonians felt secure 
within the mighty walls of their city. Babylon was builded on 
both banks of the Euphrates. The impregnable wall was 
arched low across the river. Nebuchadnezzar had built an 
artificial lake with which the volume of water in the river was 
regulated. When the spring floods came the river overflowed 
into the lake. When the dry season came the water flowed 
from the lake back into the river. This great feat of engineer- 
ing kept the river at about the same volume all the year round. 
Cyrus defeated the army which Babylon sent out to meet him 
and drove it back into the city. Then he surrounded the city 
and prevented the army from coming out again. Then he 
sent another army to the deepening and widening of Nebu- 
chadnezzar's reservoir. When everything was ready he turned 



90 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

the whole river into it, and in the night his besieging army 
rushed through the river bed into the city, took the Babylo- 
nians by surprise and slaughtered them at will. 

The change had come — what hope for the Jews ? Suppose 
we had the historic warrant for saying that the Jewish priests 
of those agricultural colonies led their brethren over to help 
Cyrus — that twenty thousand Jews toiled for dear life, deepen- 
ing and widening that lake, while Cyrus used his entire army 
in the pretended siege — that would explain why Cyrus was 
afterward friendly to the Jews. Have we any historic warrant 
for that conjecture ? Professor Sayce, of Oxford, an orthodox 
authority, thinks we have. See his article, " Babylonia," in the 
Encyclopaedia Britannica. We do know that, from the 
very first, Cyrus was friendly to the Jews ; and we know, on 
general principles, that ancient conquerors were not friendly 
to anybody without personal and substantial reasons. If not by 
digging in the lake for him, then by fighting in his army, by 
feeding his army and caring for his sick and wounded, by act- 
ing as spies and informers for him, by giving him some great 
and greatly needed assistance, I think it most reasonable that 
they merited his gratitude. Their condition under the Baby- 
lonians was hopeless, and it is perfectly reasonable to suppose 
they would help anybody that could bring a change of admin- 
istration. The world hasn't got over wanting changes of ad- 
ministration even yet. When thousands of Union soldiers were 
cooped up in Andersonville they would have welcomed and 
fought for any change, and would have plotted to assist Span- 
iards or Turks. 

But here is another reason, of which many scholars make a 
great deal. The Babylonians were idolaters, worshiped the 
idols of many gods, and their idolatry was immoral and sensual. 
The Jews loathed it, for it sadly corrupted their youth. Cyrus 
was a Persian, and as a Persian he worshiped one God, as did 
the Jews. He hated idolatry as did the Jews. The Persian 
religion, like the Hebrew, was a devout worship of the God of 
righteousness. Jahveh and Ormazd were different names, but 
when a Jew and a Persian soldier talked of religion, when Cyrus 
and a Jewish priest compared notes, they must have been 
greatly astonished to find how closely akin were their ideas of 



IN CAPTIVITY. 91 

the one eternal and spiritual Deity. Each must have thought 
the other a worshiper of his own God under a different name. 
The religious consideration very likely had weight with Cyrus 
and disposed him kindly toward the Jews. 

But there is another consideration greater still. Having 
conquered Babylon, Cyrus wanted to push on and conquer 
Egypt. Egypt was the eternal enemy of Persia, Assyria, 
Babylonia and all those northeastern kingdoms. They were 
always preparing for war with the empire of the Nile. Egypt 
was a long way off. Between him and it lay a thousand miles 
of wild territory, filled with savage marauders. A very small 
quantum of military sagacity would suggest a fortified garrison 
and base of supplies as far along on that road toward Egypt as 
possible. Cyrus would have been a fool had he not seen and 
embraced the opportunity which so clearly presented itself. 
Here were captive Jews only too anxious to go home and re- 
build Jerusalem at their own expense and give him the priv- 
ilege of it as a military post. 

Cyrus was not a fool. He made the most of that opportu- 
nity. In less than one year from the capture of Babylon he 
arranged to send home all the Jews who cared to go. He gave 
back to them all the sacred vessels and ornaments that Nebu- 
chadnezzar had taken from their temple. He helped them in 
so many ways and flattered them so shrewdly that the Jews 
adored him as Jahveh's own and best-beloved servant. 

Any one of these three reasons — help given by Jews in the 
conquest of Babylon, the similarity of religions, Cyrus' need of 
a base of operations against Egypt — any one of the three is 
sufficient to account for the return of the Jews from captivity. 
All three together make an abundance of reasons — more than 
are needed. They are all natural reasons. We have no excuse 
for seeking or accepting any supernatural reason when things 
can be accounted for naturally. That Cyrus was soon after- 
ward killed, before an Egyptian campaign could be undertaken, 
does not vitiate the argument. 



RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 



CHAPTER VII. 
The Home-Coming. 

In the year 536 B.C., under a military escort supplied by Cy- 
rus, forty or fifty thousand Jews marched home from the land 
of exile. Kuenen gives reasons for believing that the number 
was much smaller. Zerubbabel, a noted priest of the captivity, 
was their leader. It was a wearing journey of many weeks 
duration, but we can easily imagine that no hardship quelled 
the enthusiasm of that great home-coming. Their joy must 
be spiritual, however, for they did not come to a land flowing 
with milk and honey. 

Canaan had fared badly during those fifty years of exile. 
Cities and properties were in ruins. The heathen tribes round 
about had pressed into the land and gained a footing and lived 
on equal terms with the Jews who had not been taken captive. 
The returning exiles found a mongrel population, especially in 
the rural districts, and they all settled near Jerusalem. Their 
first ambition was to re-build the city and the temple of their 
fathers. So poor and weak were they, and so troublous were 
the times, that the second temple, though a small and modest 
affair, was not completed until 516 — twenty years after the 
return. 



Literature of the Return. 

Chapters xxiv.-xxvii. of Isaiah are a separate production, 
written while the Jews were struggling to build their temple. 
The picture of desolation in ch. xxiv. is in melancholy contrast 
with the brilliant hopes of chapters xxxiv.-xxxv., written fifteen 
or eighteen years before in Babylon. These two short books 
may or may not be the work of the same author. If they are, 
his feelings have greatly changed during these first years of the 
return. Shouts of triumph have become bitter complaints, 
and even his hopes have a savage kind of determination in 



THE HOME-COMING. 93 

them. When the temple is completed, God will take awful 
vengeance on the rascals roundabout who have dealt treach- 
erously — (verses 16-23.) I n cn - xxv - tne writer gets comfort 
out of the fact that a city, (we know not what city,) of some 
enemy has been despoiled. Vrs. 9 voices a grim and desperate 
trust — a patient and hard-hearted waiting for the god of ven- 
geance. Ch. xxvi. looks to the completion of the temple as a 
sort of resurrection. They have been as dead men, but they 
shall live. Ch. xxvii. is a continued wail, with sturdy hope for 
blessing " in that day " when God shall be properly worshiped 
in "the holy mount at Jerusalem." 

Chapters i.-viii. of Zechariah, written in the year 520, are 
modeled after the turgid pattern of Ezekiel. They also have 
Ezekiel's earnestness and fervor. After picturing the general 
despair, (ch. i.) an angel comes to exhort the building of the 
temple, or its hasty completion. Ch. ii. produces another 
angel to declare that Jerusalem shall be so great and so di- 
vinely protected that no walls will be needed. Ch. iii. has an 
angel to exhort Joshua, the High Priest. Then Zechariah 
adopts the style of Second Isaiah and personates the returned 
exiles, the suffering servant, as a branch or shoot that springs 
from the stump of a decayed tree. This " man," who is called 
" branch," has been the occasion of endless nonsense at the 
hands of theologians. Ch. iv. has an angel to exhort Zerub- 
babel, who laid the foundations, and who shall complete the 
temple. But Zechariah begins to doubt that it will ever be 
done without miracles — "not by might nor by power, but by 
the spirit of the Lord." Ch. v. represents a flying roll, inscribed 
with curses, and the idea seems to be that henceforth the na- 
tion shall not be cursed for the sins of individuals, but that 
wicked individuals shall bear their own curse. The past sins of 
the nation, personified as an outcast woman, are driven to 
Babylonia. Ch. vi. contains a vision of horses and chariots of 
judgment, and a further pledge, by an angel, that the temple 
shall be completed. Chs. vii. and viii. appeal to the moral 
sense, and picture the prosperity and happiness that will yet 
come to the long-waiting remnant of God's people. 

Haggai, who also wrote in the year 520, dedicates his words 
to Governor Zerubbabel and High Priest Joshua. Though 



94 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

himself a Jewish priest, Zerubbabel is the eastern monarch's 
representative. Perhaps he had little else to do than gather 
the tribute. The High Priest was the actual ruler of the Jews. 
Haggai pictures the poverty and hunger of his comrades in 
striking phraseology, but promises that if they will hastily com- 
plete the temple, these forms of wretchedness will vanish and 
Godwill abundantly bless them. 

Joel took advantage of a plague of locusts to point the 
divine vengeance. All the losses and calamities of the time 
are due to the fact that " the meat-offering and drink-offering" 
are delayed. Let the temple be hastily completed and the 
service properly established, then "The Lord will roar out of 
Zion," the heathen will be discomfited, the earth will yield 
bountifully, and the Jews will by happy. 



The Sufferer s Pride. 

The remnants of the Ten Tribes, which were not taken cap- 
tive by the Assyrians, had lingered on in Samaria these two 
hundred years, but they had mixed with heathen peoples until 
the returning exiles would not recognize them as of Hebrew 
blood. In the Puritanical eyes of the exile-Jew, these mixed 
Israelites had ceased to be the children of Abraham, and were 
become despised " Samaritans." These Samaritans, while 
overwhelmed with foreign admixture, had done what the Sax- 
ons of England did with the invading Normans — had retained 
and even imposed upon the foreigners their own language and 
religion. They felt that they had made Israelites of the strang- 
ers who came amongst them and intermarried with them, and 
they were proud of the accomplishment. The returned exiles 
did not appreciate that accomplishment. They despised the 
Samaritans for having mixed at all with foreigners. They de- 
spised the Samaritans especially for not having suffered as 
they themselves had suffered. The Samaritans were ready to 
welcome the exiles home and assist them in building their 
temple. They were anxious that all who had any Hebrew 
blood in their veins should re-unite in one kingdom as in the 
glorious days of Solomon, but the sufferers were proud of their 
own heroic experiences and they scorned the stay-at-home 



THE HOME-COMING. 95 

Samaritans as the battle-scarred veteran despises the stay-at- 
home at the close of the war. Samaritan help was loftily re- 
pelled. The exiles from Babylonia would be self-sufficient ex- 
iles in Jerusalem, nurturing their pride even in their poverty, 
for they believed God would yet restore their little band to su- 
preme power. They had been the great sufferers, and they 
would have the glory all their own. Egotism and selfishness 
are not seldom the fruits of faithful endurance. 

This unfraternal spirit of "the faithful " angered the Samari- 
tans, who then became and forever remained the hated and 
hating enemies of the Jews. For the next five centuries these 
two peoples, both claiming Abraham to be their father, kept 
alive all the bitterness and spitefulness and littleness of a family 
quarrel. 



96 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

The Law. 

Babylonian Jews. 

Not all, not half, the exiles took advantage of Cyrus' courtesy 
to return to Canaan. Under Persian rule Babylon was a com- 
fortable home for Jews. Cyrus and his successors gave them 
perfect liberty of citizenship and religion. The Persian relig- 
ion was so nearly like their own that there was little about it to 
offend their prejudices. Thousands of them had made money 
and married Babylonian wives and built their houses, where chil- 
dren were born to them. They were comfortable and happy and 
had lost much of their sectarian zeal. Why should they go 
back to Judea ? Judea had been so utterly desolated that to 
live there was to live in the poverty and struggle of the frontier. 
As word came of the sufferings and discouragements in Jeru- 
salem, the Babylonian Jews were less and less inclined to make 
martyrs of themselves. 

Jews of wealth and culture especially liked the city of Baby- 
lon. It was old and rich and luxurious. It required a vast 
amount of enthusiasm to give up that splendid way of living 
and suffer the hardships of Judea for the mere sake of the 
temple worship. They could preserve the Israelite faith where 
they were. Why should they go back to poverty and hard- 
ship for the mere sake of the temple ? That is the way they 
began to put the case. That is why, after the first rush of zeal, 
so few of the Jews abandoned their Babylonian homes. 

Jews have always had the faculty of gaining prominence in 
Gentile capitals. Disraeli became premier of England. Roth- 
child dictated the finances of Paris and France. Josephus 
became the favorite of a Roman emperor. The Jews in Baby- 
lon struggled up until we find Ezra in prime favor at the heathen 
court, and Nehemiah is actually the king's cup-bearer. Such 



THE LAW. ©7 

position of influence had the .descendants of the exiles obtained 
in seventy or eighty years after the return. 

Among the Jews of Babylon, those who gained highest favor 
with the heathen rulers were the ones who maintained their 
pure Jewish blood and faith. These select and exclusive fam- 
ilies took vast pride in their faithfulness to race and religion. 
Of course they were better educated, more highly cultured, 
shrewder politicians, than their brethren at Jerusalem. Eighty 
years of freedom in the great capital of the Euphrates had not 
been lost upon them, but their ambition was still for Jerusalem. 
Though they made money and enjoyed life in Babylon, they 
ceaselessly dreamed of joining the friends in Canaan, and of 
making their forefathers' religion the glorious thing so long 
prophesied. If they did not go to the land of their fathers 
and endure its privations, they did what was of infinitely greater 
moment to the future of Judaism— they created the ritual and 
established the ceremonies which alone could insure the very 
existence of the religion they loved. The intellectual work is 
always the greatest and most enduring work of any people. 
The Jewish priests in Babylon, during those seventy-eight years 
between the return (536) and Ezra's move to Jerusalem (458), 
did the intellectual work which gave Judaism five more cen- 
turies of organized life. 



The Priesthood and the Mythical Tabernacle. 

In Exodus and Leviticus and Numbers we read of a costly 
and most gorgeous tabernacle, a movable temple, magnifi- 
cently furnished and appointed for ceremonial worship. In 
connection with that tabernacle, we read of a fully developed 
priesthood, with a completed torah, whose laws and ordinances 
were elaborate and minute almost beyond patience. That 
tabernacle and that priesthood never had any existence until 
they were created in the imagination of the exile priests. They 
also were pious frauds, wrought out with patriotic purpose, as 
was the book of Deuteronomy. 

In using this expression — pious fraud — let me be understood 
as putting the emphasis on the former, not on the latter word. 
This crediting of earlier authors with their own works was 

13 



98 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

fraudulent, but it was a fraud from which personal pride and 
self-interest were quite eliminated. Indeed there was a remark- 
able self-forgetfulness in this obliteration of their own honors. 
It was a fraud for the sake of the cause they loved better than 
self. It was " doing a little harm that great good might come 
of it." That is always a doubtful and dangerous proceeding, 
but the wrong of it was not then appreciated, Could the bad 
results have been foreseen, they were enough to appal even 
the stout hearts of Josiah and Ezra. The hatred and persecu- 
tion, the denunciation of students and investigation, the pop- 
ular suspicion of simple truth and historic fact, the wide fear 
that intellectual light is destructive of religion, all which are 
still produced by the false theories which rest on these pious 
frauds, are enough to point the injunction that it is never wise 
to do wrong that good may come of it. All this was future 
and unseen to Josiah and Ezra, and we must acquit them of 
much evil purpose. 

Of course it has occurred to the most purblind reader of the 
Bible to wonder what became of that famous tabernacle and 
that closely organized priesthood of the Wilderness. There 
was the movable temple, the place of God's presence, where 
the divine glory was daily manifested, where was conducted 
one of the most elaborate services the world ever saw, all 
through the journeying of those fortyyears, and right up to the 
ford of the Jordan : beyond the crossing of Jordan we never 
again hear tell of it. There was the full-fledged priesthood, 
with High Priest and assistants, with mitre and stole, with 
every conceivable pomp and circumstance, in a constant blaze 
of activity and renown, right up to the Jordan ford : beyond 
the crossing of Jordan that priesthood is never seen nor heard 
tell of. Before Jordan, the glorious brazen altar, the laver of 
superb construction, the sacred vessels of fine workmanship, 
and all the solemn formalities of preparing the sacrifice : after 
Jordan, a rude heap of stones, with the simplest barbarian 
manner of worship. Before Jordan, a magnificence of cere- 
monial which would do credit to Saint Peter's : after Jordan, a 
primitive sacrifice by any common chieftain or head of a 
family in the forest or on the hill-top. Before Jordan, a 
thoroughly civilized and cultured and beautiful procedure: 



THE LAW. V9 

after Jordan, the savagery of human sacrifice. What so sud- 
denly became of that fine religious culture, that noble and 
loftily intellectual and heart-inspiring liturgy? Was it all 
washed down into the Dead Sea? 

Of all the miracles recorded in the Old Testament, none is 
half so wonderful as would have been required to account for 
this instantaneous extinction of the tabernacle and the priest- 
hood and all Hebrew memory of them. We might as well 
claim that in the early years of the 17th century the Indians of 
New England had a religious ceremonial, as ornate as the 
Catholic ceremonial of Italy, which they had forgotten and 
lost all traces of when the Pilgrims landed a few years later. 
Everything that pertains to the tabernacle of Moses and the 
priesthood of Aaron is fictitious. No Hebrew or Israelite or 
Jew ever heard of these things until he heard them from the 
priests of the exile. 

The priesthood of the Hebrews began with the building of 
Solomon's temple. Its first great prominence came with 
Josiah's introduction of Deuteronomy in the year 621. When 
Josiah was struggling to lift the priesthood into power why did 
he not refer to that ancient priesthood of Aaron ? Why did 
he not read to the assembled nation the laws and ordinances 
of the tabernacle? Because he had never heard tell of them. 
When the book of Deuteronomy was put forth with the great 
purpose of ecclesiasticising the nation, why was Aaron's name 
omitted ? Why was no reference made in that book to the 
tabernacle? Because Hilkiah, the High Priest, and Shaphan, 
the Chief Scribe, knew nothing about Aaron and the taber- 
nacle. The authors of this forged book of Deuteronomy con- 
stantly speak of " The place which God shall choose " to be 
worshiped in. Why do they not speak plainly of the taber- 
nacle as the place which God had long before chosen, and 
sanctified a thousand times over ? Because they never heard 
tell of and did not imagine any such thing as the tabernacle. 
In Deut. xxxi. 14-15, the King James version speaks of a taber- 
nacle ; but it is a mistranslation, as the Revised Version shows. 
It was simply the " tent of meeting " — the tent in which the 
elders gathered for consultation. 

When the priests of the exile wrote the Law of Holiness that 



lOO RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

"tent of meeting" had been given a slight semblance of ec- 
clesiasticism. There had been a small evolution of assump- 
tion concerning Mosaic ritualism. The name of Aaron had 
been rescued from oblivion and made priestly. The Law of 
Holiness yet calls it the " tent of meeting," but makes it the 
place of sacrifice ; still there is no elaborateness of ceremonial. 
The Law of Holiness was probably composed in the early part 
of the exile — before the year 575 B.C. 

After the return under Zerubbabel, 536; after the comple- 
tion of the second temple, 516 ; after the Babylonian Jews came 
into social prominence — perhaps later than 475 B.C. — the Jew- 
ish priests of the Babylonian colony began their great work of 
making an ecclesiastical history. Back of the conquest of 
Canaan there was nothing except the traditions and hero stories 
of the Prophet history, which was written three hundred years 
before their own time. They re-wrote the full period from 
Adam to the death of Joshua. They wrote from the priestly 
standpoint. Their entire work was for the sake of the taber- 
nacle. They took the proportions of Solomon's temple and scaled 
them to the tent. They made the tent, in every measure, exactly 
half of the temple. Josiah had wonderful success in attributing 
Deuteronomy to Moses. The priests of the exile had been ex 
tensively successful in attributing the Law of Holiness to Moses. 
Proverbs had been freely and successfully attributed to Solo- 
mon ; psalms to David ; while Job had been accepted as a real 
historic person, and the Samson myth had come to be a genu- 
ine hero ; what was there to hinder a more gigantic feat of 
pious imposition than any of these ? It was a hundred and 
twenty or thirty years now since the temple of Solomon was 
burned. The uneducated masses could easily be induced to 
believe that the history now being concocted had rested for 
centuries in that ancient temple — discovered in the ruins, as 
they believed Deuteronomy had been. There was no " destruc- 
tive criticism," then. Credulity had full sway. 

The entire purpose was to create an imaginary government 
of the priesthood, with the tabernacle instead of the temple, 
in that ancient and unhistoric time — a ritualism, a theocracy, 
which would suit their own times — a form of ecclesiastical 
organization, religious and political, in which the High Priest 



TEE LAW. lOl 

was supreme ruler, the priesthood a complete government. 
They must so arrange their history that no king was needed. 
Moses was made to be a guide and an inspired prophet, him- 
self more than half priest. Aaron was exalted as the sublime 
type of earthly rule. God himself was made the actual ruler, 
with Aaron for his spokesman and representative. The High 
Priest was clothed with Divine wisdom and authority. It was 
a great scheme, carefully wrought out. Ezra was perhaps the 
chief author. His famous Priestcode, containing all that part 
of the Hexateuch which, as we have already seen, does not belong 
to the Prophet history, was completed in Babylon, about the 
year 458 B.C. 



Ezra in Jerusalem. 

As soon as the Priestcode was completed, in the year 458, 
Ezra and many others of like patriotism and fanaticism set 
out from Babylon to reform the affairs of their brethren in 
Judea. They brought rich presents and good wishes and in- 
finite zeal. They found the religion of their fatherland in a sad 
state. The temple, less than sixty years old, was neglected and 
falling into ruin. Their brethren had suffered in poverty, wait- 
ing Jahveh's blessing, until their faith was exhausted, and they 
had gone to work to make friends of Mammon. They had es- 
tablished business relations with the heathen roundabout, and 
were giving more heed to their flocks and vineyards than to 
the offices of worship. 

The sin of the Ten Tribes had become the sin of the returned 
exiles and their descendants — intermarriage with the heathen. 
This intermarriage more than everything else was breaking down 
the sectarianism, the social and religious peculiarity, of the 
Jews. Such families were not so exclusively under control of 
the priests as other families were. Students of sociology have 
often pointed out the fact that it is the wealthier and the more 
intelligent and cultured of different nations who intermarry. 
They are the people who can travel and who are more attracted 
by personal qualities, who give less heed to traditions, who do 
not marry somebody in the neighborhood as a matter of 
course, who are more independent of priestly regulations. In 



102 EESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

conformity with that general law it was the better class of 
Jewish men and women who had foreign wives and husbands. 
It was the houses of special prosperity and refinement through- 
out Judea in which father or mother was heathen, and to 
which heathen grooms and brides came for the children. Such 
intermarriage is a good thing for the coming race. It is God's 
great law of physical and mental and moral evolution, but it 
is not always a good thing for the perpetuity of a distinct or- 
der of politics or theology. It broadens the area of life and 
blots out the lines of tradition. It make humanitarians, not 
sectarians. It was fast merging heathen and Jew into a new 
and better and less fanatical race. To Ezra and his fellow 
fanatics who were honestly sectarian, and who had lofty aspi- 
rations for a nation of the pure faith and blood, the case 
looked desperate. Having kept their own purity of race 
and faith in a heathen land, this unfaithfulness in the fath- 
erland was peculiarly shocking. A marvelous energy and the 
cruelty of despair were aroused in Ezra's heart. There is no 
cruelty on earth like that of a religious fanatic. He felt that the 
old-time superstition could be appealed to. How slowly super- 
stition dies ! It slumbers ; but to what awful vengeance it can 
be awakened ! With what multiplied power cultured supersti- 
tion can wield ignorant superstition ! Ezra's education and 
his honesty made his own superstition invincible. In the most 
dramatic way he excited the masses of ignorant and poor peo- 
ple to the pitch of madness with this single question : " Why, 
in these eighty years since the return, have you enioyed so 
little prosperity and suffered so much poverty and defeat? 
Your fathers came back from Babylon with high hopes. God 
was ready to bless them and make a mighty nation of them. 
He did not. There is a reason why. You know well enough 
what that reason is. Your fathers and you have toiled on in 
misery. It is because you have allowed in your midst the hor- 
rible sin of the Samaritans. Put away that evil from amongst 
you ; then God will bless you. Until then He will pursue you 
with vengeance." 

What was the evil to be put away? The heathen wives and 
husbands and children. For two or three generations those 
domestic bonds had been forming. The guillotine of fanat- 



THE LAW. 103 

icism was to cut right down through the family ties and sacred 
affections of many thousand homes. Every wife or husband of 
heathen blood should immediately leave the country. When 
Ezra announced that decree there went up to heaven such a 
wail of grief as Nebuchadnezzar's captivity itself had not caused. 
But Ezra had the fanaticism of the masses up to the pitch where 
it gave melancholy support to his decree. Thousands of 
homes were immediately ruined, the friendship with all un- 
Jewish people was broken, the fanatical priest came into su- 
preme power, the Puritanical age of Judea was begun. 






Nehemiah in Jerusalem. 

Ezra's power seems to have exhausted itself with the ex- 
pulsion of the heathen wives and husbands. He did not feel 
equal to the task of introducing his Priestcode, his so-called 
Law of Moses. He kept it secret and bided his time. The 
time delayed. Fresh calamities hurried upon Jerusalem. Again 
the temple was almost totally destroyed. The city walls were 
broken down. Judea became the helpless prey of those hea- 
then peoples roundabout who had been so deeply insulted by 
the action of Ezra. Thirteen weary years dragged their slow 
lengths along, and Ezra had pushed his Puritanism but had 
done little else. 

Over in Babylon the cup-bearer to Artaxerxes, the Jewish 
Nehemiah, was moved by the sad stories from Jerusalem to ask 
a great favor of his royal patron. The favor was that Artax- 
erxes would appoint him Governor of Judea, for Judea was still 
a Persian province. His prayer was granted, and the new 
Governor, in the year 445, came to Jerusalem with royal au- 
thority. Nehemiah was quite as much of a fanatic and much 
more of a manager than Ezra. He was a very whirlwind of en- 
thusiasm and activity. In a few months he had rebuilt the 
walls of the city and taught the heathen some wholesome mil- 
itary lessons. He corrected abuses, even going so far as to 
cancel the debts of all the poor, which gained him the love of 
the common people. He repaired, practically rebuilt, the tem- 
ple, and established the worship quite gloriously. 



104 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

The great thing he did, however, was the thing Ezra had 
been unable to do — he promulgated the Priestcode. After the 
example of Josiah he assembled the people and had the so- 
called Law of Moses read and explained to them ; and great 
was their astonishment at hearing of the tabernacle and all its 
magnificent forms of worship; and their wonder knew no 
bounds at the recital of priestly power and honor in the olden 
time. 

Nehemiah had not been kind to the poor, however, without 
the purpose of exacting implicit obedience. The priestly rule 
was rigidly enforced. All the tithes and sacrifices and cere- 
monial laws were put into strict operation. The prohibition of 
intermarriage with heathen was binding to the letter. The 
Sabbath became a day of awful solemnity. There was order, 
economy, rigidity and terrible earnestnesss throughout the 
land which this old-time Cromwell dominated. The people 
became obedient, worshipful, strong of spirit. The sense of 
weakness was gone. Enthusiasm came. Judea entered upon 
an age of prosperity. 

The saying is attributed to Napoleon that "Goodness or 
badness in rulers is scarcely to be considered : national pros- 
perity demands first of all that rulers be men of personal 
power." Ezra and Nehemiah were men of power. They 
were fanatics, but they were immeasurably more than that ; 
they were statesmen, and they were men of supreme virtues, 
though cruel and deceptive. Their cruelty was necessity and 
their deception was policy. They stood once more in the 
breach and stayed the national collapse. They organized and 
drilled and inspired until the "Jews rose from utter discourage- 
ment and negligence into a compact, energetic, keenly intelli- 
gent and proudly sectarian people. 

If the reader is confused by these alternate commendations 
and rebukes, these commendations for wisdom and these re- 
bukes for cruelty, these commendations for honesty of purpose 
and these rebukes for the use of questionable methods, he will 
perhaps find no relief except in the general course of human 
history. He will find that nearly all great epochs are accom- 
panied with local injustice and tainted by acts of violence. 

It has been a grand thing for the world that the Hebrews 



THE LAW. lOS 

became supreme in Canaan, but that does annul their murder 
and robbery of the Canaanites. It has been a great thing for 
the world that the Caesars destroyed hundreds of tribes and 
petty kingdoms in the establishment of Rome, but that does 
not sanctify the unnumbered ravages of the imperial army nor 
the wholesale confiscations of property. It has been a grand 
thing for civilization that England obtained sway in India, but 
that does not blot out the cruelties of Warren Hastings' rule. 

Those who are too bitter against the wrongs committed by 
tyrants and the robberies of men in power, are apt to forget 
the ignorance and barbarity with which advancing j forces are 
met. On the other hand, those who too readily^condone the 
harshness of progressive methods are apt to forget that] his- 
tory might have worked itself out on other lines, that the 
heights of civilization might have been reached sooner with 
more humane procedures. But for certain great injustices 
Israel or Rome or England might not have been the leading na- 
tion, but there would have been leaders, teachers, progress, arts, 
science, literature, religion, all that we have, and better, if 
men had always been better and nations more just. It is an 
unspeakable fallacy to suppose that the historic course of hu- 
man life was the only possible course. Liberty and culture 
and righteousness might have been wrought out as well and 
as speedily had every great nation of the past been, blotted 
from the earth before its day of power and every great 
man of the past died in his infancy. Other nations, other 
men, other forms of government and religion, other methods 
of progress would have arisen to do the work. God's eternal 
purpose could not be blocked by any human failure. The 
glory of providence is that, whatever methods men adopt, the 
Divine purpose moves on — if not by a straight path, then by 
a zigzag or roundabout path, but forever on to its goal. If 
men do right, the right steadily develops ; if they do wrong, 
there is a right in things which overrules the wrong and makes 
it a servant. Water may be confined but not compressed. As 
the secret fountains feed the reservoir a time comes when no 
possible barrier may withstand the cumulative force. Tyranny 
may hedge about the thoughts and the loves and the liberties 
and the noble aspirations of men, but man always receives a 

H 



106 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

fresh supply from the divine fountains — the breaking of all 
bonds and the wide rush of progress will come. A river may- 
be turned from its direct course a hundred times, but it will 
circle or plough through all barriers and find the sea. The 
evils of human policy have made the stream of life a crooked 
one. Otherwise it might have been straighter and arrived at 
the goal of civilization more quickly. 



The Pentateuch. 

Very soon after Nehemiah's arrival in Jerusalem (445), the 
Priestcode of Ezra and the Prophet history of the eighth cen- 
tury were combined, dove-tailed, made into one, as we have 
already seen, and substantially as we have it to-day. Deuteron- 
omy was put into it as the fifth book, Jacob's Blessing, The Cov- 
enant and the Law of Holiness were all fitted in, and the whole 
great work ascribed bodily to Moses. This was the beginning 
of that work of the temple Scribes, who proceeded to gather 
about the law those commentaries long afterward known as 
" the traditions of the elders." The forming of the Pentateuch 
from these various writings was probably under the direction 
of Ezra and Nehemiah. The first half of Joshua, written in 
the eighth century, was also welded to the second half, written 
in this fifth century. 



Memoirs and Malachi. 

The books of Ezra and Nehemiah were put into their pres- 
ent shape more than a hundred years after the time we are 
considering. The memoirs contained in those books, however, 
were probably written, substantially as we have them, by the 
men themselves. In both books, part of the writing is in the 
first person and part in the third person. The general sub- 
stance of those parts which are written in the first person 
belongs to Ezra and Nehemiah. The rest, and the editing of 
these memoirs themselves, must be set down as the work of 
some unknown author and editor of the third century. 

Malachi means messenger. This book, in the form of a 
prediction, was probably written a few years after the coming 



THE LAW. 107 

of Nehemiah to Jerusalem, whose brilliant work it commemo- 
rates. Nehemiah is the "Messenger" who came "suddenly" 
to the temple ; he is the " sun of righteousness " who arose 
"with healing in his wings;" it was he who "turned the heart 
of the fathers to the children and the heart of the children to 
the fathers," by canceling the debts of the poor. 



Ruth and Jonah. 

1Lzx2l and Nehemiah had insisted that Jews should marry 
none but Jews, and they had diligently taught that Jews alone 
were God's children, that all other peoples were outside the 
pale of Divine providence and regard. Against this exclusive 
law of marriage and against this idea of God's exclusive regard 
for Jews the two novels, or stories, of Ruth and Jonah were 
respectively launched — not far from the year 400 B. C. 

The plot of the book of Ruth is laid away back in the time 
of the Judges. It is a simple, charming pastoral of how a 
Hebrew and his wife journeyed into a heathen land, and how 
their two sons married heathen girls, and how happy they all 
were ; and then how the father and both sons died, and how a 
sweet and lasting love united the widowed mother and her 
heathen daughters-in-law, and how one of the younger women 
clung to the mother and went back with her to the Hebrew 
country. A sweeter story was never told. We can easily im- 
agine how it appealed to the hearts of thousands whose parents 
or grandparents had thus been a happy union of Jew and Gen- 
tile. How eagerly they would read it and look back to " the 
good old times," and thank God there was no Ezra then to 
crush the ties of family affection and drive good people from 
their homes because they had married those they loved. 

The last part of the story, Ruth's marriage with Boaz, though 
delightfully told, is the least pleasing part of it. The author 
must needs end the story that way, however, for he was writing 
with a determined purpose. He meant to give an illustrious 
example that should be a weapon of defense against the exclu- 
siveness of the priesthood for all time. He had a splendid 
reason for marrying Ruth to Boaz. It was that he might make 
a heathen woman to be the great-grandmother of King David. 



108 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

Nobody knew enough about that ancient history to contradict 
him, and he had written a story so simple, so beautiful, that 
everybody would repeat it and love it — a story that could never 
die — a story that put heathen blood into the veins of the most 
illustrious man of the nation's history. 

The book of Jonah is not only a novel, it is one of the finest 
bits of irony that ever was written. The author's purpose is 
not only to deny but to ridicule the idea that God cares for 
nobody but Jews. As Hebrew writers continually do, this 
author goes back several centuries for his precedent. He 
takes a prophet, of whom there was a dim tradition, of the time 
of Jeroboam the Second, in the ninth century, and he gives to 
that prophet the exclusive and narrow-souled principles of Ne- 
hemiah. Jonah, just like Nehemiah, will not have it that 
Divine providence and regard are for any but Jews. If ever a 
man was made ridiculous, Jonah is held up to ridicule in his 
stubborn devotion to that narrow view of providence. The 
author takes a poet's license in representing God as playing 
alternately upon the bigotries and fears of the unwilling mis- 
sionary. At first the Almighty accedes to Jonah's universal 
hatred of everybody but Jews— grants Jonah the happy priv- 
ilege of condemning the greatest of heathen cities to destruc- 
tion. Jonah is afraid that God's wrath will not hold out, has 
a suspicion that he is being ridiculed, and he tries to run away. 
By a series of miracles, which the keen-witted author meant 
to be as ridiculous as possible, Jonah is brought back and com- 
pelled to go and pronounce judgment on the heathen city. 
Then God mocks him by not fulfilling the judgment. Jonah 
goes out into the wilderness, angry and humiliated. More 
miracles, and quite as ridiculous, are worked to show him what 
a stupid he has been ; and then comes the great proclamation 
that God is not a monster who would destroy children and 
ignorant people because they were heathen. The roars of 
laughter which greeted the publication of that story of Jonah 
must have gone far toward shaking the foundations, in all 
the more thoughtful minds, of Nehemiah's exclusive Jewish 
providence ! But when the laughter had evaporated there 
was found a strong draught of common sense and reason 
and reverence in this cup of wisdom. God was not simply 



THE LAW. 109 

the God of the Jews ; He was the "God of righteousness, 
the protector of the helpless, the Father of the penitent, 
throughout all the earth. Peter, like Jonah, was an un- 
willing missionary to the heathen, and after Peter had been 
treated a good deal as Jonah was, his narrow mind is opened 
until he can see that " God is no respecter of persons, but in 
every nation," (not he that believeth in the creed, but) " he 
that worketh righteousness is accepted." 



The Conservative Era. 

The intense religion of the priestly order lasted about two 
centuries after the coming of Ezra to Jerusalem. During the 
early part of this period, as we have seen, the ceremonial law 
was published and incorporated with the ancient history of the 
Hebrews. People gradually came to believe that all the past 
had been like the present. They thought of Moses as a modern 
ritualist, of David as a writer of hymns for the temple, of the 
priesthood and the formalism as belonging to all the earlier 
ages. All that is about like the notions of children in this age 
who should think that St. Paul traveled on the steam cars and 
bought morning papers and preached in churches that were 
lighted by gas or electricity. It is so easy to believe that our 
age has always been. The next generation after Ezra regarded 
the Priestcode, the law, the elaborate and intricate ritualism 
of Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers, as the possession of the 
Hebrews in the Wilderness and of all succeeding times. 

For almost two centuries after Ezra's reform (458 B.C.) the re- 
ligious ideas and ceremonies of the Jews were settled and fixed, 
habits were continuous, the masses were believers in the com- 
mon teaching, it scarcely occurred to people that things ever 
had been or ever could be different; Judaism was firm, ingraft, 
changeless, like Catholicism in the Middle Ages or Scotch 
Presbyterianism of the 17th century. There were a few noble 
heretics, like the authors of Ruth and Jonah, in the early part 
of this period, but their heresies were overcome, their books 
were read with a different meaning, just as Longfellow and 
Whittier have been read by millions who did not see the 



HO RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

un-Orthodox teaching of their poems. These two centuries 
belonged to the priests. All thought and feeling was directed 
by the priests. Priests traveled constantly throughout the 
land teaching the ceremonial law and binding it upon the 
hearts of the people as the word of God, given to Moses. The 
old strain of the prophets, the pleading of morality as God's 
great requirement, had died away. It was not righteousness, 
not people, that God loved ; it was the temple, the sacrifice, 
the minutest requirement of the ceremonial law. All other 
thoughts of providence were lost in this — that God was pleased 
with the temple service — that the exact, complete forms of 
worship were supremely delightful to him — that for the joy He 
took in being perfectly worshiped He would render all assist- 
ance and bestow all blessing. It was an age in which people 
did not think, an age in which thought was considered dan- 
gerous, an age of faith, of reverence, of humility, of brave 
defence, of the love of ecclesiastical duty, of bigotry, of con- 
serving energy, of plodding sameness, of narrowing impulse, 
of intense patriotism and sectarianism,, of exaggerated pe- 
culiarities, of orderly and obedient conduct, of growing fanat- 
icism, of unmeasured credulity, of slavish obedience to the 
priesthood, of united devotion and dwindling intelligence. 
Like all other epochs of Conservatism, it was an age that util- 
ized the forces of the past, consumed its own energies in main- 
taing its own social and religious order, and provided nothing 
for the future. Conservatism is a winter in which men warm 
and feed themselves by means of the toil and harvest of the 
previous summer — arriving always at that breaking up of the 
springtime in which Radicalism must launch forth to provide 
a new harvest. 



Chronicles. 

Chronicles, written as late as 300 B. C, was intended to fix 
the ecclesiastical regime, of the decadence of which there were 
ominous signs too clearly visible to the wise. Chronicles deals 
with the temple of Solomon, as the Priestcode dealt with the 
tabernacle of Moses. The tabernacle was entirely fictitious, 
but the author of Chronicles succeeded in putting a round sum 



THE LAW. Ill 

of fiction into the first temple. Everything concerning that first 
temple should be a glorious model, an ideal, for the devotees 
of his own age. He cannot make his precedents too startling. 
He exalts David into 'a very wonder of devotion, and gath- 
ers ideal princes into his plan, and sets forth the old time 
ceremonials with lavish disregard of history and possibility. 
He tells us that David gave three thousand talents of gold and 
seven, thousand talents of silver, that the "princes" gave five 
thousand talents of gold and ten thousand talents of silver, 
with which to complete the temple. The Bible Atlas and 
Gazetteer, published by the American Tract Society, gives 
the value of a gold talent as something over $24,000. Eight 
thousand talents would be $192,000,000. A talent of silver 
was something more than $1,000. Seventeen thousand talents 
would be $17,000,000. A grand total, including the "ten 
thousand drams of gold and the eighteen thousand talents 
of brass," of more than $200,000,000. That is preparation 
for a great house. Then we are told that when Solomon got 
ready to build the temple, he detailed 150,000 men to do the 
work, with 3,600 overseers. This immense army of workmen 
toiled seven years in the construction of the temple. What a 
gigantic house it ought to have been ! What an astonishment 
it is to read that the wondrous structure was only 60 x 120 feet ! 
How could 150,000 men work seven years, at an expense of 
more than $200,000,000, in erecting a little house, 60x120 feet? 
The Chronicler did not dare make the size of Solomon's temple 
different from the traditional memory of it ; he could only 
exaggerate the expense ; but he counted on infinite credulity 
to fit his two sets of figures together. 

With equal assurance, the Chronicler tells us that at the ded- 
ication 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep were offered in sacrifice. 
144,000 animals slaughtered in one week ! Something over 
20,500 a day! Mr. Armour's greatest slaughter house in the 
world is considered a wonder by its killing of 10,000 a day. 
Solomon is made to more than double Armour, and all of this 
in the little temple court which contained less than an acre of 
space. Whatever else the Chronicler was, he was certainly a 
poet, " of imagination all compact." The cloud of God's pres- 
ence that filled the temple, and the king's great prayer of dedi- 



112 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

cation, and the throngs of drilled priests in attendance, may- 
all be measured by these wild statements of expense and sac- 
rifice. When history is written by a priest, in the interest of a 
ruling priesthood, at a time when there is no critic to dissect 
his statements, we may always expect this kind of history. 

Chronicles did what it was intended to do — it fixed the idea 
in the minds of the ignorant masses that the priesthood of the 
second temple was but a feeble copy of the priesthood of the 
first temple — that the order of life and religion in these 3d and 
4th centuries rested on the glorious precedent of the 10th and 
nth centuries. A fable universally believed has all the politi- 
cal power of truth. This particular fable stayed the disruption 
a little while. 



Psalms. 

The psalms, half of which are expressly attributed to David, 
and many others to David's time, belong also, in the bulk, to 
this period of Chronicle writing. They compose the service 
book of the second temple. It is more than doubtful if a single 
one of them can be attributed to the time of David or Solomon. 
Their great purpose is, exactly as in Chronicles, to glorify the 
temple worship. The law, which they constantly magnify, is 
the Priestcode. Their spirit of devotion is^ sublime. Priestly 
religions are always noted for a devout trust and exalted faith 
in the personal relations of God to his church, his altar, and to 
the true hearts of his elect worshipers. The psalms are flooded 
and illumined with noble conceptions of the Divine presence as 
a guiding, helping, pitying, comforting presence. Confession, 
penitence, heroic resolve, confidence, moral courage, spiritual 
communion, joy of the new spiritual births, exaltation of soul, 
gratitude, reverence, awe, secret and sacred power with God, 
all the deep and high emotions of religion are so finely expressed 
in these ancient prayers and songs of the heart that they must 
ferever remain as the best expressions of devout sentiment. 

This true sentiment is all turned by the psalm writers into 
priestly channels. This natural feeling is made to serve the 
temple and the ceremonial. Even a great old nature-hymn, 
like the first six verses of Psalm xix., is adapted, appended to, 
and made to place God's revelation in the universe as inferior 



THE LAW. 113 

to his revelation in the Priestcode. Psm. lxxxiv. is a declara- 
tion of God's presence in the temple, so beautifully worded that 
the charm of it obscures its bad theology, (as if God were no- 
where else,) and so manifestly the loving conviction of its author 
that we forgive all narrowness of his thought in sympathy with 
his fine and tender emotions. Even the psalm of human brother- 
hood, (the cxxxiii.,) must be brought under subjection to this 
priestly regime by a reference to Aaron and the annoint- 
ing oil, and a declaration that in Mt. Zion is the fountain of 
divine life. Even the psalm of filial love, (the xxiii.,) is made 
to express life's highest joy as the work of a temple priest — and 
it is spoiled by an expression of favoritism which grates harshly 
as if the priest's enemies were always God's enemies, whom God 
will take pleasure in taunting with luxurious attentions to his 
priests. The shameful venom and horrible cursing of psalm 
cxix. carries the thought of favoritism to the most immoral ex- 
treme, as if no crime could be a crime in one who worshiped 
according to the temple code. 

The belief in Divine favoritism always wields an extreme 
influence. It makes a pure heart most reverent and devoted. 
It makes a cruel nature quite diabolical. Whoever believes 
that he belongs to God's favorite class treads the precipice of 
fanaticism. Fanaticism may continue to be a depth of love. 
On any occasion it may change to a gulf of hate. Face your 
martyr about and he easily becomes a persecutor. Whoever 
is ready to die for his peculiar belief may quickly get ready to 
kill for it. In the unambitious, a belief in favoritism takes the 
form of placid obedience and affectionate trust; but even with 
them, when the theological question comes up, there is likely 
to be a gentle and mournful kind of suspicion toward all who 
do not accept the creed. In the ambitious, it takes the form of 
cieed-defence or persecution. On the one hand a humble and 
tearful selfishness ; on the other hand a robust and aggressive 
vengeance. Even that very mild form of favoritism which 
claims a special and peculiar inspiration for the Bible, as their 
authority, has always characterized the Bible-defenders as an 
assuming and vindictive race. 

It thus happens that the psalms contain not only the most 
tender and beautiful but the hardest and most repulsive senti- 

15 



114 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

ments. This belief in favoritism accounts for both. Fenelon 
and Torquemada are alike the natural products of Catholicism. 
Wesley's prayers and Calvin's murder of Servetus are alike the 
natural products of belief in God's exclusive love of Protestant- 
ism. The most self-sacrificing missionary and most bigoted 
heresy-hunter grow from the same stalk. Extravagant belief in 
God's peculiar concern for us and for our creed and our Church 
is thrice loving for our loving moods, is gall and bitterness 
when our mood is crossed. The sense of universal providence 
may not sharpen to a point of such enthusiasm; neither does it 
sharpen to a dagger's point, in act or word or feeling. 

Let it be repeated, however, that the spiritual mood of the 
psalms is man's highest religious mood. We all, at times, 
have the great uplift of a feeling of personal relation with God. 
We need not believe in favoritism to be touched and pro- 
foundly moved by the sense of personal relationship — unless 
we rise to that highest and grandest of all religious thinking 
wherein every man is the favorite of Heaven, wherein the uni- 
versal providence is seen to be an infinite care for each. In- 
deed, the true evolution of religion is not to detract from God's 
care for any, but to appreciate the fullness of his concern for 
all ; to understand that the ancient thought of favoritism was 
but a partial vision of the universal love ; to see that the im- 
mutable laws of the universe are the complete expression of 
that Fatherly interest which our ancestors blindly grasped in 
the dream of miracles. This, however, ceases to be favoritism. 
Love for one child arouses bigotry in it and jealousy in the 
others. The same love for all becomes the perfect tenderness 
and sympathy, because the happy equality, of the household. 



GREEK IN EL UEN CE 118 



CHAPTER IX. 



Greek Influence. 

Alexander conquered Judea and made it a Greek province in 
the year 332 B. C. For a long time after this the Jews continued 
their religious loyalty — the priests were supreme in the realm 
of family and devotional life. Of course it must finally come 
that Greek culture would detract from the simple-minded 
Jewish belief ; it must come that Greek militarism would fill 
Jewish hearts with an ambition too obdurate for priestly control ; 
it must come that Greek sensuality would corrupt Jewish man- 
ners. Once a priest-ridden people get a wider thought, and 
begin to think of their fathers' theology as narrow, they break 
away — and the first break is often not to something better. 
A narrow circle of thought has its own completed sense of 
devotion. The first effect of widened thought is often a rup- 
ture of devotion. 

This Greek influence was met by such efforts as Chronicles — 
by a frantic appeal to manufactured history and blind credulity. 
The priestly cry, then as always, was : " Do not think ; believe 
and conform." The strictly orthodox, then as always, united 
with the enemies of religion to denounce reason as irreligious, 
to regard genius as destructive of faith, to drive worship back 
to the den of ignorance. 

The Jews were inspired by the Greeks to think, but not to 
think reverently, not to live righteously. They were inspired 
with ambitions, but not with devout ambitions. By the year 
250 B. C. the devout period, the period of psalm writing and 
temple faithfulness, was coming to a close. Jews had become 
lovers of war, sensualists, infidel and iconoclastic. The two 
books which represent the increased intelligence and degene- 
rated morals and religion of that age, are : 



116 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

Esther and Ecclesiastes. 

The book of Esther is as terribly out of place among the 
prophets and dramas and the other novels of the Old Testament 
as Don Juan would be among a collection of sacred poems. It 
contains some of the worst things ever put into literature. 

The only Jewish festival which was entirely dissociated from 
religious observance — the feast of Purim — a purely social and 
benevolent occasion — had grown up during the period of Greek 
influence. For many centuries the religion and the politics and 
the social life of the Hebrews had been one and invivisible ; 
and you must appreciate how greatly the priests had lost their 
hold on the masses when Jews could have a national festival 
which had no religious significance. The Jewish age of unsec- 
tarianism and unbelief had come, when liberty was carried into 
license. The history of the Greek Olympiads, the constant 
practice of Greek un religious festivals, had penetrated Jewish 
feeling and begotten a love of secularism. 

The Jews had not lost the habit of going back to some old 
period of history to find the origin of every custom. When 
Hilkiah discovered (?) the book of Deuteronomy in the corner 
of the temple he had no conception of the imitators that would 
follow in his path. If they could not arrange to discover a book, 
(that would be imitating too closely), they could discover a bit 
of history out of which to make a book. 

The book of Esther was written about the year 250 B.C., to 
account for the feast of Purim. The history out of which the 
book is made was discovered in the writer's inner conscious- 
ness, and discovers him to have been ill posted on Persian 
history. Esther is represented as a Jewish woman of Xerxes' 
harem, who became Xerxes' queen about the year 475 B. C. 
As the reward of her lust she was able to frustrate a courtier's 
plan for the wholesale massacre of Jews ; and she succeeded, 
by the power of her physical charms with the sensuous mon- 
arch, in turning the tables, not only to the extent of hanging 
the wicked courtier, but of putting the doomed Jews in posi- 
tion to massacre seventy or eighty thousand Persians. The 
feast of thanksgiving which followed that bloody deed was 
reckoned by the author as the origin of the feast of Purim. 

At the time when this wonderful history is represented as 






GREEK \INFL UENCE. 1 1 7 

enacting, about 475 B. C, both Ezra and Nehemiah were living 
in Babylon. Their silence concerning it is sufficient proof of 
its falsity. Persian law did not allow the monarch to take 
a queen except from Persian families of noble rank. It was 
impossible for Esther to attain that distinction. The proposi- 
tion that multitudes of Persians would quietly wait the adver- 
tised day when an alien race should rise up and murder them 
is absurd beyond compare. You might as well try to imagine 
the President of the U. S. proclaiming a day on which the 
negroes of the South should slaughter the whites — the whites 
meekly waiting their appointed slaughter. That the feast of 
Purim, a social and benevolent occasion, could have originated 
in any such transaction of bloodthirstiness, even had such a 
thing been, is contrary to all reason. To assume such an origin 
for such a festival but shows the degradation of the author's 
moral sense. All men of reverent spirit ought to feel glad 
that God's name is not mentioned in the entire book — a book 
that outrages manhood and disgraces womanhood. 

The assumptions which previous authors had made for 
Joseph and Moses in Egypt, doubtless encouraged this author 
to feel that he could place a Jew in official position quite as 
exalted at the Babylonian court. The real cases of exaltation — 
Nehemiah, Josephus, Disreali — should not blind us to such 
impossibilities as are claimed for Esther, Moses and Joseph. 
Between these two sets of cases are all the distinctions that 
separate history from fairy tale. 



Ecclesiastes is the work of some Nihilist of the third cen- 
tury. He represents Greek influence (philosophically speak- 
ing,) at its worst, in its most deadly skepticism of and infidel- 
ity to all the noblest principles of life. Proverbs is the reflec- 
tion of an unreligious moralist. Ecclesiastes is the fault- 
finding of a cynic. In ch. i. he declares that life is vanity and 
labor a delusion and enthusiasm a snare. All forms of happi- 
ness fail, wisdom is a disappointment, the purest joy is not 
satisfying. In ch. ii. he finds that luxury is about like toil — a 
failure ; he compares wisdom and folly, with the slight ad- 
vantage for a wise man that he can laugh at the emptiness of 
things. He finds riches no better than poverty; he finds 



118 , RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

death and annihilation to be the lot of all, with the conclusion 
that the pandering to our physical appetites and passions is 
the only good left us : " Eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." 
In ch. iii. he teaches that God's purpose cannot be known; he 
doubts if there be any providence ; injustice as often holds the 
sway as justice ; it is absurd to look to another world for re- 
dress ; man is but a wiser beast, with no spirit of the divine or 
the immortal in him ; and he concludes again that the only 
thing left us is to enjoy the physical pleasures of the passing 
hour. In ch. iv. he sums up life as unredressed wrong, foolish 
rivalry, painful isolation, deceptive promise and blasted hope. 
In ch. v. he gives advice, which consists of maxims by which 
to avoid some of the evils and vexations that throng our path- 
way — no aim, no purpose, no hope, no usefulness is intimated. 
Existence, in all its serious phases, is wrong — avoid as much 
of it as possible — do not be serious about anything— enjoy your 
animal pleasures — they will end in pain if you live long 
enough, but you may die tomorrow and escape the fruits of 
vice. In ch. vi. he derides ambition, aspiration, all high en- 
deavor, and turns Calvanist of the bluest type, declaring that 
effort is useless, since all things are predestined. In ch. vii. 
he comes to one definite proposition, which is that woman 
must be held responsible for a large portion of the evils 
of life — woman is supremely bad, impure, untrustworthy. 
That is the conclusion arrived at by every burnt-out repro- 
bate since the world began. In ch. viii. he proves himself 
a traitor to his race by counseling meek obedience to what- 
soever king may hold them in subjection. Make your 
peace with the powers that be ; patriotism is nonsense ; devo- 
tion to any idea or principle is a fool's whim. Again we are 
told that life is an evil and that death ends everything, and we 
are exhorted to smile at the vanity of things and get what 
pleasure we can in eating and drinking. In ch. ix. he scorns 
moral conviction, declares that the virtues of the heroes are 
not remembered, that money is greater than wisdom and duty, 
and that death is universal oblivion. In ch. x. he gives the 
result of cynical observations, with much contempt for com- 
mon people and a sop of praise for aristocracy. He has found 
out the way of the world : " Money answereth all things." 



GREEK INFLUENCE. 119 

Be careful how you criticise kings and rich people. Strange 
teaching is this, for Bible teaching, if any student yet assumes 
that all the Bible is inspired of God ! 

This author betters the instruction of Josiah and Ezra and 
all the rest, who date their works backward, by himself claim- 
ing to be King Solomon. He may have meant it as a deep 
sarcasm on the pietistic and sensuous old ruler. His work has 
done much to degrade the builder of the temple and the 
harem. 

The exhortations of the last two chapters — exhortations to 
benevolence, to faithfulness in our daily duties, to a supreme 
trust in God for the good outcome of our labor, to earnestness 
and purity in the days of youth, to obey the commands of God 
— are so unlike the burden of the other ten chapters : these 
declarations, of a wise and just providence and of the return of 
the spirit to God at death, are so different from the bald ma- 
terialism of the other ten chapters, that we can only conclude 
they are the additions of a later and better hand. The genius 
of the ten chapters, their dominant refrain, is to scorn God, to 
despise his commands, to suspect men, to slander women, to 
hold virtue and duty in contempt, to live in the passions and 
be satisfied with animalism. 



120 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 



CHAPTER X. 

The Jewish Reformation. 

Judas Maccabceus. 

The last, and one of the greatest, of Old Testament books — 
the book of Daniel— cannot be understood without a brief 
review of the intervening history. 

Alexander took possession of Palestine in the year 332 B. 
C. After his death it passed into the hands of Ptolemy I., one 
of Alexander's favorite generals, who received Egypt in the 
division of kingdoms, and who was the founder of the illus- 
trious Greek dynasty of Egyptian rulers — the Ptolemies. Egypt 
was made thoroughly Grecian, used the Greek language, and 
Ptolemy's court was the favorite resort of Greek philosophers. 
It was the welcome home of all scholars, and 'thither flocked 
many educated Jews. Thither also flocked many trading Jews 
who were not specially educated. The Hebrew was fast be- 
coming a dead language, especially in Egypt, for all but the 
more scholarly Jews. Greek everywhere prevailed. For the 
convenience of their unscholarly brethren, the scholars among 
the Egyptian Jews translated the Hebrew books of our Bible 
into Greek. The story of " The Septuagint" — that seventy 
scribes shut themselves up in seventy separate rooms, each 
translating the entire Scriptures, finding afterward that they 
all exactly agreed in their work — is a pretty fiction. 

After the death of Ptolemy IV. Palestine was secured by 
Antiochus III., king of Syria, in the year 205 B. C. In 187 his 
son, Seleucus IV. succeeded to the Syrian throne. The Jews 
had become wealthy and vast treasure was laid up in the tem- 
ple, which many of them loved far better as a safety vault than 
as a place of worship. Its sacred character did not prevent 
Seleucus from attempting to rob it. He failed in the burglary, 
but succeeded to some extent by intrigue with purchasable 
priests. 



THE JEWISH REFORMATION. 121 

Seleucus died in 175 and was succeeded by his younger 
brother, Antiochus IV., who carried the temple robbery to a 
shameful extreme. The temple was finally sacked and ruined, 
and heathen gods were set up in the sacred court. Jerusalem 
was overrun with hostile armies ; wealthy Jews were driven 
from their homes, which were occupied by favorites of the 
Syrian king. Disasters continued until the better class of Jews 
fled in multitudes to all the cities of the Mediterranean — safer, 
happier, more prosperous anywhere else than in their native 
land. 

These outward calamities, however, were not the most 
serious threatenings to Hebrew life. Worse than all that was 
the religious indifference, the spiritual deadness, the loss of 
faith, the decay of the ancient spirit of worship, the worldliness 
of the priesthood, the silence of the prophet's voice, the almost 
universal aping of heathen customs and manners. The Jews 
had ceased to be a peculiar people, lost their patriotism in the 
love of money and social recognition. They even became 
ashamed of their peculiarities in presence of the cultured 
Greeks ; neglected their festivals and ceremonial rites ; named 
their children after Greek gods and heroes ; built a gymna- 
sium ; purchased and sold the privilege of Greek citizenship. 
The temple priests themselves were foremost in this heathen- 
izing process. One high priest went so far as to send a 
present for offerings on the altar of Hercules, the god whose 
worship was most popular at the Syrian court. The priests 
were become a nobility, with riches and political power, 
and they betrayed what integrity there was left in Judaism to 
the highest bidder. The altars of " strange gods " were in 
every city and hamlet of Palestine. Wellhausen says : "All 
that was religiously distinctive in Judaism was to be removed. 
The Mosaic cultus was abolished, Sabbath observance and the 
rite of circumcision prohibited, all copies of the Torah confis- 
cated and burnt. In the desecrated and partially-destroyed 
temple pagan ceremonies were performed, and upon the 
great altar of burnt-offering a small altar to Zeus Olympios was 
erected, on which the first offering was made on the 25th 
Kislev 168. In the country towns also heathen altars were 
erected, and the Jews compelled, on pain of death, publicly to 
16 



122 RESULTS \0F HIGHER CRITICISM. 

adore the false gods and eat swine's flesh that had been sacri- 
ficed to idols." Such was the proclamation and such the 
attempt of Antiochus, who sent an army through Palestine to 
complete this heathenizing work. 

There are always a few faithful souls whom no calamity and 
no general degradation can overcome. One such, an aged 
priest, lived with his seven sons in a little village near Jerusa- 
lem. The Syrian general heard of this old priest's faithfulness 
and concluded he would make an example of him. It was time 
to root out the last seeds of Judaism. Passing through his 
village the Syrian general ordered him to offer sacrifice on the 
heathen altar that stood close by. The priest refused. The 
general threatened. The white-haired old man leapt upon the 
heathen commander and slew him, and then, with his sons, 
fled northward into the hills. The story spread, and the little 
spark of Jewish patriotism flamed up and soon kindled a fire 
that swept Judea's hills as no fire of patriotism had swept 
them since the great days of King David. 

The name of that old priest was Matthias, and the name of 
his most famous son was Judas Maccabseus, the Charles Mar- 
tel, or the Henry of Navarre, or the Gustavus Adolphus of 
Jewish history. Gathering a band of faithful young men, Judas 
traversed the land destroying heathen altars by night and flee- 
ing to the mountain fastnesses in the daytime. The governor 
tnought these fanatical Jews would not fight on their Sabbath 
day, and he sent a company of soldiers who tracked them into 
the mountains and waited for the Sabbath, to butcher them 
without resistance. The governor reckoned without his host. 
Judas fell upon the soldiers and butchered them. Victory 
brought recruits. Apollonius took the field with his entire 
army. He was killed and his army cut to pieces. This greater 
victory brought a multitude of recruits. The son of the old 
priest organized, armed and drilled them. Governor Seron of 
Ccelesyria came against him with a large army, which the fiery 
young Cromwell demolished and routed. Judas entered Jeru- 
salem, drove the heathen out, fortified the walls and began the 
work of cleansing and repairing the temple. The great gen- 
eral, Lysias, sent an army in three divisions to surround and 
storm the city. Judas anticipated the plan, rushed out on this 



THE JEWISH BEE OB MA TTON. 123 

side and now on that, repulsing the divisions one by one. 
Lysias took the field in person, and then it might have gone 
hard with Judas had not the veteran conqueror been suddenly 
called away by the death of the king. How like a providence 
that seemed ! Judas now applied himself to the task of rescu- 
ing and re-Judaizing the towns and villages. Out and in. far 
and near, even as far as to Lebanon and Damascus, he sallied, 
and carried an awful victory with him wherever he went. In 
the year 160 B. C. he met the entire Syrian army, under the 
great Nicanor, and Nicanor was slain and his army cut to 
pieces. The career of Maccabaeus did not pause until Judea 
was again united and pulsing with vigorous life, until the Jew- 
ish religion was powerful and Jerusalem was secure once more 
as the holy city of the Jews. 



The Book of Daniel. 

What has the above history to do with the book of Daniel ? 
Everything to do with it. That great and patriotic and relig- 
ious novel was most probably written in the year 165 B. C, 
during the Maccabaean struggles for liberty and restoration. 
Its purpose was, by telling the most wonderful stories of how 
God had helped his people in a former age, and by playing on 
the popular belief in prophecy and the fulfillment of prophecy, 
to arouse faith and hope and partiotism and courage for the 
impending struggle. It seems that there was a belief in the 
existence, somewhere along in the old Hebrew history, of a 
man named Daniel, of great repute for his virtue and holiness. 
He is mentioned by Ezekiel (Ezek. xiv : 14,) in connection with 
Noah and Job. All these are probably as apocryphal as William 
Tell and Prester John. This highly uncertain Daniel is located 
in Babylon at the time of the captivity, and is made the hero 
of such marvelous exploits as the Jews had learned, in the 
Homerain legends, to associate with Greek heroes. For start- 
ling experiences and miraculous rescues Daniel is quite worthy 
to be compared with Jason or Ulysses. 

Chapter I. introduces the young man, Daniel, as a sort of 
page in the Babylonian court, a lad of Israelite blood and 
faith, whom Jahveh favors with miraculous attention. Chapter 



124 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

II. tells us how the young Daniel interprets Nebuchadnezzar's 
dream. The image, with head of gold, breast of silver, body 
of brass, legs of iron and feet of iron and clay, represents the 
outline of political history (as the writer understood it), from 
Nebuchadnezzar through the Medean and Persian and Mace- 
donian kingdoms to the Seleucidae. The stone which smites 
the image is Maccabseus, or the providence of Jahveh through 
the instrumentality of Maccabaeus. In chapter III. we have 
the golden image on the plain of Dura ; Daniel's refusal to 
worship ; his confinement in the fiery furnace ; his miraculous 
escape; and Nebuchadnezzar's conversion to the Jewish faith. 
In chapter IV. Daniel interprets another dream, of the mighty 
tree that is cut down, in which the King's own fall and insanity 
are pictured. Then follows the fulfillment of the prediction — 
the King's seven years' of insanity and his recovery, with a new 
pledge of loyalty to the God of the Jews. In chapter V. we 
have the great story of King Belshazzar's feast ; of the hand- 
writing on the wall ; of Daniel's interpretation ; with a bare 
announcment of Belshazzar's death, In chapter VI. we have a 
new king, Darius, by whom Daniel is exalted ; we have the decree 
by which Daniel is unwittingly condemned ; we have the story 
of miraculous escape from the lions, and the conversion of 
King Darius to the Jewish religion. So much for Babylonian 
history, in which there are several mistakes. The siege of 
Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar in 605 B. C. never took place. 
Belshazzer was not the son of Nebuchadnezzar and was not 
king. Darius also is an entirely fictitious king. Nebuchad- 
nezzar was succeeded by Nabonidus, and he by Cyrus, the great 
Persian conqueror. During the four centuries between the 
captivity and the writing of this book of Daniel, Babylonian 
history had been seriously forgotten. 

The remainder of the book is alleged prophecy. In chapter 
VII. we are taken back to the time of the fictitious king Bel- 
shazzer, when Daniel has a dream of the four beasts — a lion 
with eagle's wings (Nebuchadnezzar, strong and swift) — a 
bear (the fictitious Darius, a devourer) — a leopard with four 
wings and four heads (Cyrus, the intrepid, the cunning and the 
wise) — a fourth beast with great iron teeth which destroyed 
everything (Alexander the Great.) This beast had ten horns 



THE JEWISH BEFORMATION. I2S 

(the various rulers which followed the breaking up of Alex- 
ander's kingdom.) Among these came up a little horn which 
spake proud things and prevailed against the saints. This was 
Antiochus, under whom the temple was profaned and the Jews 
persecuted. In chapter VIII. are more horns. The ram with 
two| horns is the Medo Persian empire, pushing west. The 
" notable horn " is Alexander, pushing east. The four horns 
which follow are the four kingdoms (Antiochan, Egyptian, 
Thracian and Macedonian,) into which the conquered nations 
were divided. The "little horn" again is Antiochus, who 
came into power in the year 175 B. C, and who so cruelly per- 
secuted the Jewish religion. It was the "little horn" who 
"took away the daily sacrifice," prohibited the temple worship 
for the space of " 2,300 mornings and evenings." As a matter 
of fact Antiochus destroyed the temple worship in 168, and 
Judas restored it in 165, in the same month : z. e., the daily sac- 
rifice was taken away but 1,095 days. If the author of Daniel 
counted both the morning and evening sacrifice it would be 
2,190. Our author must have reckoned from some profanation 
of the temple two months earlier. 

Chapter IX. carries us along to the first year of the fictitious 
King Darius, when Daniel undertook to solve the prophecy of 
Jeremiah. We are told how Daniel confessed and prayed, and 
that God sent the angel Gabriel to explain the prophecy. Jere- 
miah had said (Jer. xxv. 12) that the Jews should be in cap- 
tivity seventy years. That was a mistake. The Jews were 
only in captivity fifty years. Jeremiah ventured a grand hope 
of restoration, giving the round number seventy. It came 
sooner than he dared hope. The Jews had always been puz- 
zled to figure out Jeremiah's exact seventy. The angel Gabriel 
is made to explain to Daniel that Jeremiah did not mean sev- 
enty years, but seventy weeks of years, i. e. seventy weeks, 
each day of which stands for a year — four hundred and ninety 
years. This explanation (Dan. ix. 24-27) divides the seventy 
weeks into three periods — seven weeks, sixty-two weeks and 
one week. The time begins with the command to restore Jeru- 
salem. Our author possibly had the XXXIst of Jeremiah in 
mind. He assumed that when Jerusalem was destroyed, in 
586, God commanded the rebuilding of it. The seven weeks, 



126 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

49 days, which represent 49 years, coincide fairly well with the 

50 years of captivity. Reckoning to the capture of Babylon by 
Cyrus it was exactly 49 years. The next period of 62 weeks, 
434 days, representing 434 years, the author intends shall bring 
us down to the attacks of Antiochus on Jerusalem and the 
assassination of the High Priest, in the year 172. As a matter 
of fact, not 434 years, but only 364 years intervene between 
the return from captivity (536) and the attacks of Antiochus 
(172). Our author has simply made a miscalculation of seventy 
years. Such ignorance of dates is not surprising, however, in 
one who has already shown himself so ignorant of the kings 
about whom he writes. The last period, of one week, seven 
years, covers the time from Antiochus' attack on Jerusalem 
(172), to the re-establishment of the temple worship by Judas 
(165). " In the midst of that week (vrs. 27) he caused the sac- 
rifice and the oblation to cease." It was in 168 that Antiochus 
prohibited the sacrifice. Thus the great prediction of Jere- 
miah is made to refer, not to the captivity alone, but to the 
whole period between Jehoiakim and Judas. It would seem 
that he considered the whole period from the destruction of 
Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar down to his own day as a time 
of unfaithfulness. At least two hundred years of that period, 
from the coming of Ezra to the middle of the third century, 
was the golden age of Jewish religion, the time of transcend- 
ent devotion and unswerving fidelity. Can it be that the 
author of Daniel was ignorant of that? Perhaps he had a 
different thought in mind : perhaps he looked for a restoration 
of the'kingdom with a great Jewish king on David's throne 
once more. Writing, in the midst of the Maccabsean war, 
soon after the restoration of the temple worship, this may 
have been his purpose— to inspire the people to make Judas 
their king. 

Chapter X. is a redoubled appeal to credulity, and it pre- 
pares the superstitious mind of his age again for a wonderful 
revelation. The intervention of archangels is nobly wrought. 
Chapter XL refers to the four kings of Persia (vrs. 2), to Alex- 
ander the Great (vrs. 3), to the breaking up of Alexander's 
empire (vrs. 4), and to the struggles (vrs. 5-20) of the kings of 
Antioch with the kings of Egypt ; and then to the history of 



THE JEWISH REFORMATION. 127 

Antiochus (vrs. 21-45), how he battled with Egypt and encom- 
passed the destruction of Jerusalem. The last verse refers to 
the death of Antiochus, year 165. Chapter XII. dreams a glo- 
rious time to come. Whether the writer means a literal resur- 
rection of the dead or refers to a new life of resurrected relig- 
ion, it were difficult to say. When he wrote the war was still 
raging. His heated imagination may have pictured wonders 
unspeakable. The victories of Maccabaeus were to usher in a 
new order. He was ready to believe things as strange as he 
had related. 

You may call the book of Daniel a deception, if you like ; I 
do not find it in my heart to condemn such a deception at such 
a time. A nation's life trembled in the balance— all Judaism 
must be aroused to a desperate faith and courage. The moral 
standards of that age were not as high as they are now. I can 
imagine no other way in which the man of literature could do 
so great a work for his country and his religion. It was not 
an ideal thing in its moral bearings, but it is nobly excusable. 

Is was to the armies of Judas what the stirring pamphlets of 
Thomas Paine were to the labors of Washington in the dark 
Revolutionary days, or what Uncle Tom's Cabin was to the 
enthusiasm for human liberty during the Rebellion. The 
overthrow of Belshazzar and the protection of Daniel in the 
fiery furnace and in the lion's den — how like they were to the 
providence which disposed of Lysias and Antiochus and which 
protected Judas in his many battles. As the stories of this 
peculiar book flew from mouth to mouth men felt that God 
had risen in his holy wrath once more — the Lord of Hosts 
again, as in Daniel's time — and was fighting for his people. If 
people accepted it as a prophecy, four centuries old — as an 
ancient book which the author discovered — that made its 
appeal all the more powerful. This remarkable author was 
not only a patriot, he was a devoutly religious man, and his 
purpose was to bring back the hearts and minds of the Jews 
to a faithful worship of God. The success of Maccabaeus was 
but incidental to that great consummation. The coming of the 
"son of man" was a figure of speech, a personification of re- 
ligious Utopia, by which he meant the faithfulness, once more, 
of God's chosen people. 



128 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

Recapitulation of Dates. 

b. c. 
Jacob's Blessing, (Gen. xlix.) was probably composed as 

early as 1 200 

The Covenant, (Ex. xxi-xxiii : 18,) perhaps reached its 
present form, with few exceptions, as early as 1 1 50 

The Song of Deborah and the Hero-Stories of the book 
of Judges were probably put into literary form by ... . 1 100 

The Wars of fahveh and the Book of Jasher, embodied 
in later histories, were perhaps completed a little 
before 1 000 

The Acts of Solomon and the Books of Nathan and Gad 
concerning King David, probably composed before.. . . 900 

The Decalogue, in some primitive form, may have been 
as old as the Temple, but was hot put into its present 
shape, with its lofty moral teaching, until later than . . 800 

Amos, perhaps completed by 770 

The Prophet-History, which consists of the story parts of 
Gen. Ex. Lev. Num. and Josh., belongs to that great 
literary period of sixty or seventy years in the middle 
part of the 8th Cent. 

The Song of Solomon, same period 8th Cent. 

The Song of Moses and Moses' Blessing, (Deut. xxxii. and 
xxxiii.) are thought by many to be separate produc- 
tions of the same period 8th Cent. 

Psalms, a few, such as the 3d, 4th, 5th, nth, 20th, 21st, 

same period 8th Cent. 

The Chronicles of the Kings of Israel and the Chronicles 
of the Kings of Judah, embodied in later histories, 
same period 8th Cent. 

Proverbs, first collection, (chaps, x — xxii : 16,) same pe- 
riod 8th Cent. 

Rosea, perhaps completed by 745 

Zechariah, small portion, (chaps, ix-xi.) about 734 

Micah, about 720 

Isaiah, the Great, (chaps, i — xiii : 9, and xiv : 24 — xx, and 
xxi : n — xxiii., and xxviii-xxxiii), written at intervals 
during the preceding thirty years, was not completed 
until about 710 



THE JEWISH REFORMATION. 129 

B. C. 

Psalms, 46th, 48th, 76th, probably 701 

Deuteronomy, main body of the work 621 

Proverbs, second collection, (chaps; i-ix.) possibly as 

early as 620 

Zephaniah, probably 606 

Nahum, probably 605 

Job, with the exception of the speeches of Elihu, which 

were a late addition, about 600 

Psalms, a few, like 42d, 43d, about 600 

Habakkuk, about 590 

Jeremiah, written in discourses at different times during 

a period of forty years, closing with 580 

Lamentations, separate poems, composed probably dur- 
ing a period of eight or ten years, ending with 575 

The Law oj Holiness, (Lev. xvii-xxvi), the work of sev- 
eral years and several authors, completed about 575 

Ezekiel, about 570 

Zechariah, small portion, (chaps, xii-xiv), about 570 

Judges, 1st and 2d Samuel (originally one book), 1st and 
2d Kings (originally one book), were doubtless the 

work of a generation and were completed about 540 

Psalms, a few, such as 14th, 51st, 90th, 137th, about 540 

Obadiah, probably in 538 

Pseudo-Isaiah, (chaps, xxxiv-xxxv.) 537 

Isaiah, the Second, (chaps, xl-lxvi), completed about 536 

Another Pseudo-Isaiah, (chaps, xxiv-xxvii), between 525 & 520 

Zechariah, (chaps, i-viii) 520 

Haggai 5 20 

Joel, about 520 

Psalms, a few, notably 135th 516 

The Priestcode, (the ecclesiastical portions of Gen., Ex., 
Lev., Num. and Josh.) was a long and tedious work, 

completed about 458 

Ezra, the memoirs, those parts written in the 1st person, 

completed about 445 

Malachi, about 440 

Nehemiah, the memoirs, those portions written in the 1st 

person, probably completed about 42$ 

17 



ISO RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

B. C. 

Proverbs, a third collection, (chaps, xxii : 17 — xxxi), pos- 
sibly completed before 400 

Ruth, about 400 

Jonah, about 400 

The Pentateuch, put into its present form, by fusing The 
Prophet-History and The Priestcode, probably later 

than 400 

Psalms, the great body of them — the psalms of the Tem- 
ple and the Law — were composed during the 4th Cent. 

Chronicles, 1st and 2d, originally one book, first half of 

the 3d Cent. 

Ezra and Nehemiah, put into their present forms, con- 
taining the edited memoirs, first half of the 3d Cent. 

Esther, about 250 

Ecclesiastes, about 225 

Psalms, 44th, 74th, about 167 

Daniel 165 



THE CRITICS. 181 



CHAPTER XL 

The Critics. 

In Scotla7id. 

" No scholar would suppose that Moses was the author of the 
Pentateuch." So says Max Muller, in the twentieth lecture of 
The Gifford Lectures for the year 1888. 

The Gifford Lectureships were founded by that noble Scotch- 
man, eminent alike as jurist, judge, financier and religious 
philosopher, Lord Adam Gifford, who, in the year 1885, be- 
queathed $500,000 to the four universities of Scotland — Glasgow, 
Edinburgh, Aberdeen and St. Andrews — "to establish in each 
a lectureship for promoting, advancing, teaching and diffusing 
the study of Natural Theology in the widest sense of that 
term." The wide sense of that term, Lord Gifford defines as 
" The knowledge of The Infinite, the knowledge of His nature 
and attributes, the knowledge of the relations which men and 
the whole universe bear to Him, the knowledge of the. nature 
and foundation of morals and of all obligations and duties 
thence arising." 

Lord Gifford says in his bequest : " I wish my lecturers to 
treat religion as a strictly natural science, the greatest of all 
possible sciences, indeed, in one sense, the only science, that of 
Infinite Being, without reference to or reliance upon any sup- 
posed exceptional and so-called miraculous revelation. I wish 
religion to be considered just as astronomy or chemistry is. 
I am persuaded that nothing but good can result from free 
discussion." This generous and thoughtful donor also stipu- 
lated as follows : " The lecturers shall be subjected to no test 
of any kind, and shall not be required to emit or subscribe any 
declaration of belief ; they may be of any denomination what- 
ever, or of no denomination at all, (and many earnest and high- 
minded men prefer to belong to no ecclesiastical denomina- 



132 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

tion) ; they may be of any religion or way of thinking, or, as is 
sometimes said, they may be of no religion, or they may be 
so-called sceptics, or agnostics, or free-thinkers, provided only 
that they be able, reverent men, true thinkers, sincere lovers of 
and earnest seekers after truth." 

Lord Gifford was convinced that two things are essentual to 
the attainment of truth : i, absolute freedom and candor of 
thought ; 2, a reverent and earnest love of the true and the 
right. Heart and brain must work together. Without the 
spirit of reverence, inquiry becomes hypercritical ; without per- 
fect mental freedom, sentiment becomes prejudice and perver- 
sion. Dear old Dr. Hemmenway of Garrett Biblical Institute 
used to pray: "O Lord, give us both faith and reason, for 
without faith reason is skepticism, and without reason faith is 
fananticism." Lord Gifford felt that the ultimate and exact 
truth of everything is God's clearest revelation, and religion's 
only safe and enduring bulwark. He was not one of those, 
characterized by Mr. Savage, who " prate about science and 
trust superstition ; who declare the earth is solid gold but fear 
to scratch it an inch below the surface lest it turn out brass." 
He had faith that the universe is founded in the Divine Life, 
and that the facts of the universe and of human history and 
experience must establish the most reverent belief in God. He 
understood that the highest scholarship is required to find and 
arrange and set forth multitudes of facts, scientific, historic and 
philosophic, on which a perception of man's complete religious 
experience may be based. In the true spirit of a judge he 
dreaded above all things the genius of assumption and special 
pleading, either for or against. He had perfect confidence in 
the facts. 

The Scotch universities must accept his Lectureships on his 
exact conditions or not at all. To accept, committed them to 
absolute freedom of thought and speech, practically prohibited 
them from longer being sectarian institutions. They should 
henceforth be, not the thrones of any ism, but the thrones of 
untrammeled scholarship. It speaks wonderful things for the 
progress of liberty and rationalism in Scotland that they all 
accepted the bequests and have met their requirements in letter 
and in spirit. We can hardly imagine that many of our Ameri- 



TEE CRITICS. 133 

can universities would accept a theological lectureship in which 
sectarianism was ruled out and wherein the only stipulations 
were that the lecturer should be " an able, reverent man, a true 
thinker, a sincere lover of and earnest seeker after truth." It 
was in the presence of the faculty and students of the University 
of Glasgow, and in presence of many leaders of the Scotch 
orthodox churches, that Max Muller, one of the most profound 
scholars that ever lived, said : " No scholar would suppose that 
Moses was the author of the Pentateuch." Scotland not only 
hears, it nobly seconds, that fearlessness and candor of scholar- 
ship. It is enough for the students of Higher Criticism to 
recall that the land of Knox is to-day represented by The Crit- 
ical Review and The Expository Times, and that Prof. S. D. F. 
Salmond and Dr. A. B. Davidson speak right out from the heart 
of Midlothian. Scotland indeed is scarcely behind Germany in 
its rational and scientific treatment of all religious themes. 
Scotland, the great theological mother, has gotten over her 
little sectarian fears, and is half a century or more in advance 
of her American children. 



In England. 

Of the two great universities of England, Cambridge has long 
been considered especially liberal. Cambridge is the English 
champion of German Biblical scholarship. " Prof. Robertson 
Smith," says Joseph Henry Crooker, "is by far the greatest 
Biblical scholar at Cambridge University, if not in Great Bri- 
tain." Prof. Smith says: "It is sufficient to name Kuenen 
and Wellhausen as the men whose acumen and research have 
carried this enquiry (the late date and composite character of 
the Pentateuch) to a point where nothing of vital importance 
for the historical study of the Old Testament religion remains 
uncertain." 

Oxford has long been supposed the stronghold of conserv- 
atism. In former times it was such, but the Hibbert Lectures 
of Oxford correspond very closely with the Gifford Lectures of 
the Scotch universities. The Hibbert Lectureship has given to 
the world such renowned and rationalistic works as Dr. Hatch's 
"Influence of Greek Ideas on Christianity," and Prof. Sayce's if Re- 



134 RESULTS OF HIGHER? CRITICISM. 

ligion of Ancient Assyria and Babylonia," and Prof. Pfleiderer's 
"Paid and Christianity" and Kuenen's "National and Universal 
Religions," and Rhys Davids' "Buddhism," and Renan's "Influ- 
ence of Roman Institutions on Christianity," and Le Page 
Renouf s "Religion of Egypt," and Max Miiller's "Religions of 
India." As another indication of what Oxford is doing, it may- 
be noted that our famous Dr. Briggs, with Prof. Salmond of 
Aberdeen, are the joint editors of The International Theological 
Library, their purpose being to set forth in fifteen or twenty 
books, by various authors, the ripest scholarship of the nine- 
teenth century, on the great subjects of Biblical controversy. 
One of the noblest books of this library is entitled "Introduc- 
tion to the Literature of the Old Testament." Its author is R. S. 
Driver, D. D., Regius Professor of Hebrew and Canon of Christ 
Church, Oxford. Professor Driver is by universal consent one 
of the most profound Hebrew scholars of the world, and his 
book of 500 closely written pages is the most searching and 
exhaustive treatise that has ever been published on Hebrew 
literature. He is very cautious and apologetic, and always 
inclined to understate his own progressive conclusions. In 
his long chapter on the books of the Pentateuch he carefully 
weighs all the arguments that have ever been put forth in favor 
of the traditional theory, and shows, in the kindliest spirit, how 
weak and how futile those arguments are, and says: "The 
Mosaic authorship cannot be sustained." Then he proceeds to 
show that the " Books of Moses " had many authors and a slow 
growth ; that the earliest parts of them were not put in shape 
for a hundred years after Moses died, and that the latest were 
not made for a thousand years after the traditional date of the 
death of Moses. That is the teaching of conservative old 
Oxford — teaching commonly accepted without a murmur or a 
thought of dissent in the Church of England. That great book 
of Canon Driver's is the very first on the list of the Interna- 
tional Library, edited by Dr. Salmond and Dr. Briggs, for 
circulation among the orthodox ministers of all churches 
throughout the world. 

Dr. Driver divides Isaiah into three or four books, bringing 
the latest down to the times of captivity ; he dates the book of 
Job as late as 600 B.C., and rules out the speeches of Elihu ; he 



THE CRITICS. 133 

calls Ecclesiastes a pessimistic work, and says that " its teach- 
ings, as a whole, if followed consistently, would tend directly 
to paralyze human effort, to stifle every impulse to self-denial 
or philanthropy, to kill all activity of an ennobling or unself- 
ish kind," and he inclines to the opinion that it was written in 
the 3d century B. C. He dates Daniel in the time of the Mac- 
cabaean wars ; with Kuenen, he concludes that the great body of 
the Psalms constitute " The Hymn-book of the Second Tem- 
ple;" indeed, the large majority of the dates given in the last 
chapter are Oxford dates. 



In Holland and Germany. 

The names constantly appealed to by the Biblical students of 
the entire world, are the names of that great and reverent 
Dutchman, and that equally eminent and devout German — 
Kuenen and Wellhausen. These two men have been to the 
Higher Criticism what Darwin and Spencer have been to the 
philosophy and evolution. The University of Leiden, founded 
by William the Silent ; nurtured by the fathers of the Dutch 
Republic ; blessed by the patronage of John Olden-Barneveldt ; 
honored by the learning of Hugo Grotius ; the mother of great 
students, from Erpenius to Simon Episcopus and John Marck, 
has been for three centuries, in a unique sense, the home of ad- 
vancing Biblical scholarship. It is to-day the great university 
of the Dutch Reformed Church, and it is from Leiden and for 
Leiden that Abraham Kuenen speaks. He was born in Haar- 
lam in 1828, entered Leiden in '46, took his Doctor's degree in 
'51, and was immediately appointed a tutor in the university. 
In '55 he was given a Professorship, and in the same year 
married the daughter of Professor Muurhng of Groningen, a 
lady of great scholarly attainments, whose sympathies were 
with her lather's liberalism. Prof. Muurling was the leader of 
Dutch Liberalism, and young Kuenen was inspired with love 
and liberality at the same time. He plunged immediately into 
his life-work— the scientific study of the Old Testament. At 
the end of six years of laborious research, with all the patience 
and persistence and thoroughness of which the Dutch nature 
is capable, he began to write his great work on "Historical- 



l 



136 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

Critical Inquiry into the Origin of the Old Testament Books." 
Of course Kuenen was not a pioneer. Capellus and Richard 
Simon and Spinoza and Hobbs and others of the 17th century, 
Astruc and Eichhorn and Ilgen and others of the 18th century, 
Vater and De Wette and Greisbach and Bleek and Ewald and 
Vatke and Knobel and others of the first half of the 19th cen- 
tury, had been toiling in the same direction. Kuenen was not 
a pioneer, but he was the great organizer of the mass of facts 
and suggestions which all the preceding scholars had heaped 
up. In 1865, after ten years of ceaseless toil, the Historical- 
Critical Inquiry was completed. M. Renan wrote a preface for 
the French edition, in which he declared it "the completest, 
most methodical, and most judicious of all the attempts to give 
a full view of the results of research into the ancient Hebrew 
literature." 

It was an epoch-making book, but it was not in type before 
Kuenen felt that a new study was required. He went immedi- 
ately to work on "The History of Israel, 1 ' and after another five 
years that masterful book appeared. The History of Israel, 
scientifically speaking, followed the Inquiry as Darwin's 
Descent of Man followed the Origin of Species, and Kuenen 's 
two books have revolutionized theology as Darwin's have 
revolutionized science. They are storehouses of learning 
from which the materials for a thousand books have 
been drawn ; and they present a systemized philosophy of 
religion, clear, majestic, irrefutable, in the light of which all 
modern students of the Bible are inspired, and without a knowl- 
edge of whose contents, no man can longer be reckoned as a 
Bible student. 

The books by which popular American readers have become 
acquainted with Kuenen are the three volumes called " The Bible 
for Learners," and which contains the gist of his Old Testa- 
ment studies. This work is of joint authorship with Drs. Oort 
and Hooykaas. The great scholar proceeded with his task, 
and wrote "Prophets and Prophecy in Israel," and until his 
strength failed he ceased not in the labor so lovingly adopted 
in his youth. His Doctor's thesis in 1851 was an edition of 
part of the Arabic version of the Samaritan Genesis, and in 
1889 he was still revising "The Hexateuch" He died in 1891, 



THE CRITICS. 187 

after a long and painful illness, and " he was mourned," says 
Prof. Toy, " by the university, by the city, and by many in all 
lands who had never seen him." 



The University of Marburg, the oldest Protestant university 
in the world, and one of the most famous, founded by the Land- 
grave of Hesse, (friend of Luther,) and which in the seven- 
teenth century took its place as one of the foremost Calvinistic 
schools — it is from ancient, Calvinistic Marburg and for Mar- 
burg that the leading Biblical scholar of Germany, Julius Well- 
hausen, speaks. Wellhausen is to Kuenen what Spencer is to 
Darwin. Darwin and Kuenen collected and arranged facts in 
systematic order. Spencer and Wellhausen have moulded the 
facts into rich literary philosophies. Wellhausen's "Prolegom- 
ena to the History of Israel" deals with life and religion as 
well as external fact ; it is sympathetic, worshipful, affirmative ; 
the kind of a book that makes all religions kin, and wakes the 
brotherhood of all men. 

When the editors and publishers of the Encyclopedia Britan- 
nica looked about for the one scholar in all the world who was 
most thoroughly equipped for the great task of setting forth 
Bibical history in their famous work, they had no difficulty in 
finding the man. They selected the one in whose transcendent 
learning and literary genius and reverent spirit the scholars of 
all nations have confidence — Julius Wellhausen, the beloved 
disciple of Abraham Kuenen. Go to your Britannica and read 
the articles of Wellhausen on "Israel" and "Pentateuch" and find 
the same story that all the great scholars tell — the narrative 
portions of the "Books of Moses" in the eighth century B. C, 
the body of Deuteronomy in the seventh century, part of Levit- 
icus in the sixth century, the fully developed priestcode in the 
fifth century. 

Time would fail me to speak of Graf, who shares the honor 
of certain critical discoveries with Kuenen as Wallace shares 
the principle of evolution with Darwin ; of Pfleiderer, of the 
University of Berlin, whose "Philosophy of Religion" is the most 
comprehensive and instructive yet written ; of Strack, who says 
that the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch is no longer ac- 
cepted by anybody but Americans ; of Schiirer, whose " History 



138 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

of the Jewish People in the Time of Christ " is a mine of schol- 
arly riches; or of any of that "one hundred great students of 
the present day," whose learning Mr. Crooker deems perfectly 
conclusive, and all of whom agree to abandon the Mosaic 
authorship and the unity of Isaiah, and who treat all the books 
of the Old Testament historically and naturally as they treat 
other books. 



In America. 

We Americans, in most regards, are a progressive people, and 
it has been our boast that we have kept in advance of other 
nations, but in the matter of theology the average American 
church and the average American teacher have fallen back to 
the rear. The churches and the religious teachers of other 
nations are fifty years ahead of the average American. The 
great scholarly conclusions which are received as matters of 
course in France, Switzerland, Germany, Holland, England and 
Scotland, which the staunchest of church people have come to 
regard as the common sense principles of religious history and 
faith, are here looked upon as startling and destructive inno- 
vations. 

Notwithstanding the keen thrust of Prof. Strack, however, 
American students are on the way. The greatest periodical of 
American theology is that famous quarterly review, The New 
World, the religious voice of the Harvard University. With- 
out detracting at all from the merits of any other school it 
remains undisputed that Harvard is the great centre of pro- 
gressive theological scholarship in this country. Harvard has 
followed the example of the great universities of Scotland. In 
securing its teachers it asks for scholarship and does not ask 
to what church they belong. When it wanted the best Old 
Testament scholar in the country it found him in the Baptist 
church. Crawford H. Toy was the name of him. Harvard 
took him. An article from his pen in a recent number of The 
New World, on Abraham Kuenen, would, of itself, go a long 
way toward ranking American scholarship with German. 
When that article, together with Professor Toy's book on 



TEE CRITICS. 139 

''Judaism and Christianity," shall have become familiar to the 
American clergy, a new religious era will begin. 

When Prof. Shurman, (a Baptist, now President of Cornell,) 
writes a book so philosophical and so brimming with the rational 
spirit as his " Belief in God'" when Prof. Harper, another Bap- 
tist, (then of Yale, now President of Chicago University,) says 
"the scholars of Germany seem to have settled these questions ; " 
and when Presbyterian Prof. Briggs publishes Episcopalian Dr. 
Driver's scholarly rationalism ; and when Congregationalist 
Prof. Moore, of Andover, commends the German Graf ; when 
such books as Sunderland's "The Bible — Its Origin, Growth and 
Character" and Chadwick's "The Bible of To-day" and Crook- 
er's "The New Bible and Its New Uses," are coming rapidly 
from the press, it begins to look as if American scholars are to 
be included, and that Prof. Strack's thrust should be with- 
drawn. 



What does it all mean ? Is Higher Criticism destructive 
criticism ? Can we believe or imagine that the greatest univer- 
sities of France and Germany and Holland and England and 
Scotland and America, that the Encyclopedia Britannica and the 
International Theological Library are banded together in an 
awful and world-wide conspiracy to destroy the religious faith 
of Christendom ? One of the greatest statesman that England 
ever produced was modest enough to say that he could not find 
an indictment against a nation. We may safely smile at the 
temerity which finds an indictment against the combined 
scholarship of half a dozen nations. 

What are the scholars trying to do ? They are trying to get 
at the truths and facts of history. They are convinced that 
religion, the same as morals and education and science and 
art and politics and trade and every other human interest, is 
better served by knowledge than by ignorance ; that the church 
of the future will be more safe in the hands of reason than in 
the hands of superstition. These men of the higher criticism, 
French liberals, German rationalists, Dutch independents, 
English Episcopalians, Scotch Presbyterians, American Bap- 
tists and Unitarians, have been moved to their tasks by a pur- 



140 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

pose that was profoundly moral and sacredly religious. Every 
one could say, as truly did Jesus : " I am not come to destroy, 
but to fulfil." With the single exception of Renan, I do not 
believe the world has produced another set of men who were at 
once so scholarly and so devout as the men of the higher criti- 
cism, Renan has always been a man of literature rather than a 
man of prayer. He must be ranked with Strauss and Matthew 
Arnold. No man who knows anything about them can believe 
that any of the three has been other than honest and truth- 
loving. For all the rest, they are men of the most worshipful 
character, men of the most profound faith and hope, whose 
pages warm the heart with generous love and noble faith while 
they lift the mind above the fogs of superstition into the sun- 
light of religious truth. 



INCIDENTAL RESULTS. 141 



CHAPTER XII 
Incidental Results. 

The direct results of Higher Criticism are such facts of au- 
thorship, date, circumstance and meaning as have been indi- 
cated in the preceding chapters. The incidental results are 
such changes of theory and conviction and popular sentiment 
as naturally grow out of these facts. Incidental results are 
always more important than direct results. The direct result 
of Jesus' preaching was to inspire a small minority of the Jews 
with a decided feeling that conduct and character were more 
divine than the rites and ceremonies of the Temple : the in- 
cidental result was the establishment of the Christian Church. 
The direct result of the labors of Petrarch and Boccaccio was 
the resurrection of the classic literatures of Greece and Rome : 
the incidental results were the humanizing of modern thought, 
the dethronement of theology, the secularizing of European 
ambitions, the growth of science and popular education. The 
direct result of the voyages of Columbus was the discovery 
of West India and South America : the incidental results 
were the colonization of the new world and the transformation 
of the old. The direct results of the labors of Darwin are the 
denial of spontaneous life in the vegetable and animal world ; a 
recognition of the facts of living parentage for everything that 
lives, the development of new species from old by differentia- 
tion, the survival of the fittest and the eternal law of progress : 
the incidental results are denial of creation and miracle, and the 
substitution of evolutionary forces and procedures in such wide 
form as to embrace man, mind, civilization, religion and im- 
mortality itself. The incidental results of Higher Criticism 
will be a readjustment of theories concerning the Bible ; nay, 
a complete revolution of theology ; the abandonment of the 
old and the substitution of a new philosophy of revelation and 
providence. 



142 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

The "All or None" Theory. 

This venerable theory of the Bible, which is only a bluff to 
frighten the timid and rouse the prejudice of the ignorant, 
declares that everything written in the Bible is true, or else, 
that we have no reason for believing that anything it contains 
is true. If the account of creation in Genesis is not scientifi- 
cally correct, we have no right to suppose that the golden rule 
is ethically correct. If you doubt the historic reality of Jonah's 
exploits, you have no reason for accepting the historic reality 
of Paul's missionary tours. If Samson was a myth, you may 
as well say that Jesus was a myth. If it was not right, as re- 
corded in the 137th psalm, to take an enemy's little child and 
dash its brains out against a stone, then it is not right, as re- 
corded in the fifth chapter of Matthew, to love your enemies 
and do good to them that hate you. If God did not approve 
and bless Jehu for a massacre as black and loathsome as St. 
Bartholomew, as the tenth chapter of Second Kings tells us he 
did, then you have no right to believe that God approved the 
purity and charity of Christ, as the entire New Testament de- 
clares. 

If you had a friend who applied that theory to any other 
book in the world you would feel worried — not about the book 
but about your friend. In the works of Byron and Burns and 
Walt Whitman are some things that a respectable man ought 
to be ashamed of having written ; will your friend, therefore, 
denounce everything they have written as base and disrepu- 
table ? All students agree that Macaulay misrepresented Wil- 
liam Penn ; will your friend, therefore, denounce everything 
that Macaulay wrote as false and slanderous ? All artists un- 
derstand that the old Italian masters were guilty of serious 
blunders in their painting of trees and in the general arrange- 
ment of their foregrounds ; will your friend, therefore, assume 
that the old masters did not know how to paint the human face 
and figure ? You will be inquiring whether some ancestor of 
that friend did not die with softening of the brain. 

The All or None theory claims that the Bible is infallible 
and inerrant. There is no mistake as to historic fact and no 
error as to moral teaching in the entire book. On that dan- 
gerous and ridiculous foundation, the defenders of the faith 



INCIDENTAL RESULTS. 143 

take their stand. In order to show you how frail and how 
foolish is their challenge, it is not necessary to recall that some 
parts of the Bible contradict science, that some parts of it con- 
tradict history, that some parts of it contradict morality, it is 
enough to remember that upon the greatest and most vital 
questions with which it deals, the Bible contradicts itself. 

Tne first great subject treated in its pages is "Creation." 
There are two accounts. One in the first chapter of Genesis, 
and one in the second chapter. These two accounts contradict 
each other at every point. The first chapter says that creation 
occupied six days : the second chapter says that it occupied one 
day. The first chapter teaches that the new-made earth was 
covered with water : the second chapter teaches that the new- 
made earth was so dry that vegetation could not grow. The 
first chapter teaches that vegetation and animals existed before 
man : the second chapter teaches that man existed before an- 
imals or vegetation. The first chapter teaches that man and wo- 
man were created at the same time : the second chapter teaches 
that man alone was made, then vegetation and animals were 
producer;, then the Garden was planted, and after all of that 
woman was made. We need not pause to ask which of these 
accounts is true, or whether they are both guesses — the one 
important fact, which any child can see, is the impossbility 
that both can be true. 

One of the most important themes with which any book can 
deal is the nature and character of God's dealing with men. 
In the Old Testament God is often represented as tempting 
men to do wrong, We are told that he tempted Abraham, that 
He inspired Jacob to dishonesty, that He hardened Pharaoh's 
heart, that He incited the Israelites to get possession of jewels 
and rings under false pretenses ; that he taught Moses to de- 
ceive. Of course, people would become ashamed of such re- 
ligious teachings as that, and in the New Testament it is de- 
nounced as false. "God cannot be tempted of evil; neither 
tempt eth He any man. Let no man say, ' I am tempted of God.' 
He is tempted when he is drawn away of his own iust." We 
sympathize with the New Testament, but that is not the point. 
The point is that the Bible contradicts itself, and that both 
teachings cannot be true. Will you say that in the Old Testa- 



144 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

ment times God did tempt men, but that in the New Testament 
times he did not ? Then let us turn to one particular act, of which 
we have contradictory accounts in the Old Testament itself. You 
remember the story of how David once numbered the people 
for the purpose of finding out how many soldiers he could 
muster. He took the census that he might enforce the draft. 
And you remember that for doing so a pestilence came and 
killed 70,000 of his men. Now, the question is, Why did David 
make that wicked census ? Who induced him to do it ? Turn 
to the twenty-fourth chapter of Second Samuel and read that 
God "moved (z". e., inspired, induced, commanded, tempted) 
David to number the people." Now, turn to the twenty-first 
chapter of First Chronicles and read the contradictory account. 
There you are told that it was Satan who "provoked" David 
to number the people. Whether this account or that is any 
more or better than the childish theory of a primitive intelli- 
gence is not the issue. The issue is that the two statements 
contradict each other, and both cannot be true. 

If you were to ask any Evangelical believer what is the 
supreme subject with which the Bible deals, he would instantly 
reply, in one word — " Christ." If anywhere in the Bible, and 
on any subject, we should expect absolute agreement between 
the different writers, it is in the Gospel accounts of Christ. The 
simple fact is, however, that the Gospels begin their story with 
mutual contradictions. In the second chapter of Matthew we 
are told that Herod was still living at the time of Christ's 
birth, and that the wicked king was seeking to kill the infant 
Christ, and that, to avoid Herod, Joseph fled with the young 
child into Egypt. In the second chapter of Luke we are told, 
by implication, either that Herod was dead or that he had not 
the slightest disposition to harm the child of Joseph and Mary. 
We are distinctly told that the child was not taken to Egypt at 
all, but was taken to Jerusalem and publicly presented in the 
Temple, and from there was taken to his parent's home in Naz- 
areth. The question is not which of these accounts is true, or 
whether there was anything more than a floating and irrespon- 
sible tradition for either account. We are not dealing with 
questions just now. We must face the simple fact that both of 
these accounts cannot be true. 



INCIDENTAL RESULTS. 143 

We would all say that there is no other subject with which 
the Bible deals that is more important than the question of 
future life. Turn to Ecclesiastes and read : " The dead know 
not anything, neither have they any more reward. * * * * 
There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in 
the grave whither thou goest. * * * That which befalleth 
the sons of men befalleth the beasts ; even one thing befalleth 
them all; as one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all 
one breath, so that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast." 
There you have it — as bald materialism and as blank denial of 
the future life as ever was written. Turn over to Corinthians 
and read : " As we have borne the image of the earthy we shall 
also bear the image of the heavenly * * * for we know that 
if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved we have 
a building of God, eternal in the heavens. * * * O death ! 
where is thy sting ? O grave ! where is thy victory ? " Our 
souls leap up at these triumphant words of St. Paul and claim 
them as divinely true. But if they are true the words in Eccle- 
siastes are false. 



The "One Book" Theory. 

When you speak to a child or a child-like man about a book, 
he naturally concludes that it was written by a single person. 
When you explain to him that it was written by seventy-five or 
a hundred different persons, he concludes that all of them 
worked together with mutual understanding and purpose. 
When you tell him that these various authors were scattered 
over a period of a thousand years, he gropes for a dim idea 
that there must have been some kind of supernatural direction, 
that one great mind must have kept the oversight and super- 
intended the work. There must be unity of teaching— ^how 
else can it be a book ? When you explain that every great sub- 
ject dealt with by these various authors is differently treated — 
that one writer is a materialist and another a stout believer in 
immortality — that one attributes an act to God which another 
attributes to the Devil — that one says all human suffering is 
punishment for sin while another says it is God's way of 
strengthening and blessing the good — that one teaches the 
19 



146 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

resurrection of the body and another flatly denies and ridicules 
it — that one teaches the miraculous conception of Christ while 
another tells us that Joseph was his father — that one proclaims 
the law of retaliation, " an eye for an e)'e," while another 
denounces that law — that some claim God as the god of the 
Hebrews only, having no love or care for any other people, 
while some teach that He is the Father of all — when you make 
it plain, as Higher Criticism does, that there is no unity of 
teaching among the various Bible writers on a single great 
theory with which they deal, even a child must confess that the 
Bible is not a book but a literature. 

When the fragmentary character of nearly all the Old Testa- 
ment writings, especially, is pointed out, and men become 
convinced, as Higher Criticism convinces every man who dares 
to read, that psalm and prophetic exhortation and history are 
often broken and patched, mere collections of disjointed para- 
graphs, then it must be concluded that what we have in our 
Old Testament is but the remains, from many a destruction, of 
what constituted, at various periods, Hebrew literature. 

Suppose you took a chapter from The Lives of the Saints 
and a few great sections from Dante's Inferno, and Calvin's 
Five Points, and Luther's Theses, and two or three of Wesley's 
Sermons Against Calvinism, and a few of the choice poems of 
Browning and Tennyson and Longfellow and Whittier, with 
some Unitarian sermons by King and Savage and Blake ; a 
few of the broad and brotherly editorials by Lyman Abbott, 
and the creed of the Universalist church, and Emerson's essa)^ 
on Worship and Religion and the Over Soul — suppose you 
should bind these all up in one cover and send the book to the 
interior of China and tell those people that it was the Christians' 
Book of Religion — the Chinamen would find several kinds of 
Christianity in it, wouldn't they? Suppose you told them that 
every word of it was true, or that none of it was true. They 
would make note of the contradictions and come to a conclu- 
sion, wouldn't they ? If there were some higher critics among 
those Chinamen they would say to the people, " This is not 
one book, it is a collection, it represents the growth of Chris- 
tian thoughts and feelings through several centuries. Emerson 
is not responsible for these absurdities in The Lives of the 



INCIDENTAL RESULTS. 147 

Saints. Whittier and Abbott and the Universalist creed are 
not responsible for Dante's thought of hell or Wesley's belief 
in God's infinite wrath or Calvin's estimate of the Divine 
vengeance. Try these various spirits, prove these writings, 
test these beliefs and hold fast that which is good." 

That is what Higher Criticism is doing for the teachings of 
the Bible. It is simply showing that the Bible writers, age after 
age, wrote what they believed ; that there is a progress of 
thought and moral sentiment as age succeeds age, and that one 
author is not responsible for what another has written. 

Still we have people in the world who ask : " If there are 
errors in the Bible, how then do we know there is truth, and 
how shall we know what parts of it are true and what untrue ?" 
Well, my friends, I do not believe in capital punishment — not 
even for stupidity — and so I shall continue to explain. If 
March is not a delightful month how can you know that June 
is delightful ? If disease is not enjoyable how do you know 
that health is enjoyable? If such characters as Quilp and 
Fagan and Pecksniff are not ideal, how do you know that you 
ought to think well of John Jarndyce and Florence Dombey ? 
If Don Juan is not exactly the thing you wish your boys and 
girls to read, how do you know that it will be safe for them to 
read Snow Bound ? 

Any frail human being who has judgment enough to decide 
between these things has judgment enough to decide between 
the 137th Psalm and the Golden Rule ; has judgment enough 
to decide between Ecclesiastes and Corinthians ; has judgment 
enough to decide between the book of Esther and the twelfth 
chapter of Romans; has judgment enough to decide between 
the character of Solomon and the character of Jesus. All that 
any man needs is to cut loose from the " all or none " theory 
and the "one book" theory and exercise his judgment. 

You might as well say that because Benedict Arnold was a 
traitor there has never been a patriot in America, as to say that 
a mistake committed by Ezra vitiates a truth uttered by Paul. 
You might as well say that because the wild flowers are not 
blooming in December there is no beauty of a June landscape, 
as to say that the moral crudities of Genesis destroy the moral 
perfections of the Sermon on the Mount. Suppose the story 



148 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

of Washington's hatchet is a legend, what has that to do with 
Washington's honor as commander and president ? Suppose 
the stories about Christ's birth are legends, what has that to 
do with His character and teaching? When you are prepared 
to say that Washington was a fraud unless the hatchet story is 
historic, then say that Christ's teaching is not to be trusted 
unless the angel-stories of His birth and resurrection are his- 
toric. Higher Criticism proceeds on the innocent assumption 
that when men become acquainted with the facts of the Bible 
they will apply the same common sense to its teachings that 
they exercise in reading all other books. 



The " Miraculous Revelation " Theory. 

Two things are necessary in order to make any theory of 
miraculous revelation seem reasonable, even to give any faint 
excuse for its existence : 

I. It must be shown that the revelation teaches something 
which men could not learn otherwise. 

II. It must be shown that the thing taught is of supreme 
importance. 

Whatever the peculiar form of theory may be : that God 
wrote the revelation, as people used to believe He wrote the 
Ten Commandments on the tables of stone with his finger ; 
that in some miraculous manner he dictated its words to the 
human writers, as people used to believe concerning the 
prophecies ; that in any mysterious way He suggested ideas to 
the human authors, or so impressed their feelings as to direct 
and superintend the work, as our modern apologists vaguely 
hint — however the miraculous revelation is conceived, it must 
prove itself by these two signs : that its teaching could not be 
arrived at by natural means and that said teaching is of 
supreme importance. 

What are the supremely important teachings of the Old 
Testament ? The moral commands and exhortations, the de- 
nunciations of crime and vice, the doctrine of the One Right- 
eous God, the teaching of providence and worship. Can it be 
justly claimed that these sublime teachings require a miraculous 



INCIDENTAL RESULTS. 149 

revelation ? It might be so claimed, with at least a show of 
reason, if the Hebrews were the only people who had them ; 
but that is not the case. No student of history can doubt that 
Hindoos (especially Buddhists) and Egyptians had as noble 
and fine moral teaching as the Hebrews. The Egyptians had 
that moral teaching centuries before Moses, or even Abraham, 
was born. The belief in providence and the practice of 
worship belonged equally to Egyptians, Hindoos, Persians, 
Greeks and Romans. The thought of the One Supreme God 
is much older than any Hebrew writing, much older than the 
Hebrew people. We must either confess that a miraculous 
revelation was given to all these other peoples, or that the He- 
brews were the only people by nature devoid of great intelli- 
gence or deep moral feeling. It is a sad comment that they 
could only get by miraculous revelation what all others at- 
tained by the use of their native intelligence and feeling. One 
of the most supremely important ideas in religion is the 
thought of man's immortality. The Old Testament is the 
only ancient literature in which that is not clearly taught, the 
Hebrews were the only people who did not have that sublime 
conception of the soul as a daily inspiration. The conception 
of the Infinite Spirit is the only thought man ever had which 
is greater than the thought of immortality : no other thought 
is to be compared with it. This grand idea, the Hebrews were 
practically without. Of course, they had hints of it and hopes 
toward it, but it was no part of their religious system. Is it 
not strange that other nations, all heathen peoples, could get 
that sublime thought naturally, while even the miraculous 
revelation did not impart it to the Hebrews? 

Perhaps it is not these general ideas that people have in 
mind when they speak of the Bible as a miraculous revelation. 
It is quite probable that the average mind reverts to what is 
called the Plan of Salvation. All men were lost in Adam ; no 
man can be saved except by faith in the Atonement. The 
purpose of the Bible is to reveal this universal condemnation 
to endless woe, and this only means of escape by faith in 
Christ's death. If that is true it is infinitely the most impor- 
tant thing conceivable. Of course, man could know nothing 
about that universal doom and that means of escape unless it 



ISO RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

were miraculously revealed to him. What judgment is passed 
in the secret thought and purpose of God, what effect on God's 
feelings and plans the death of Jesus might have, what awaits 
the unbeliever millions of years hence — men can easily sur- 
mise these things, but no man could know anything about 
them without a miraculous revelation. If, from the beginning, 
there was such a doom and such a means of escape, we may 
well suppose that God would make a miraculous revelation to 
acquaint his children with the infinitely important facts. That, 
we are told, is exactly what He has done in the Bible. That is 
what the Bible is for. 

Let us see. The human race was lost in Adam. Men began 
to die, and to pass into that everlasting torment. It was im- 
mediately planned that the Atonement should be made, four 
thousand years hence ; but its virtues could be anticipated by 
faith. Since judgment was fixed and the means of escape 
provided, the revelation ought to have been made, right there 
in the Garden of Eden, before Adam and Eve had time to get 
sick. We are told that Jahveh came and talked with them 
about many other matters — but not a word about the endless 
woe to which they were doomed, or the means of escape. Fif- 
teen centuries roll by; men and women and children by the 
countless millions have passed on ignorantly into eternal Hell ; 
Jahveh comes again and talks familiarly and often with Noah, 
about the things of this life ; works marvelous miracles to pre- 
serve Noah's physical existence a few years longer on earth — 
but not a word about the endless doom to which his beloved 
Noah and all the rest are hastening. Another five centuries 
roll by, and Jahveh is represented as talking, times without 
number, to Abraham and Lot and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph ; 
talks about all the common affairs of this world ; works mira- 
cles by the score for these people in whom he is so peculiarly 
interested : they and the whole human race are passing on to 
the remediless woe — not one word about that awful and certain 
doom, or the provided means of escape. Other centuries roll 
by, and Jahveh is represented as continually associating with 
Moses for at least eighty years, talking with him daily, guiding 
his hand or his thought in the writing of five long books ; writing 
about morals and worship, about history and war and politics, 



INCIDENTAL RESULTS. 131 

about architecture and manufacture ; explaining with unspeak- 
able minuteness how a sacrifice must be prepared, how a portier 
should hang, how a priest should dress, what kind of hair-oil he 
should use ; working miracles every day to prove his wondrous 
love for these doomed people — but not a single word about the 
everlasting doom which waited them, or the means of escape — 
chapter after chapter concerning the most trivial and infinites- 
imal concerns of rite and ceremony, but absolute silence con- 
cerning even the fact that there was any existence whatever 
beyond death. Other five centuries roll by ; Jahveh has often 
talked with men, and now he is continually with David and 
Solomon for another sixty or eighty years ; inspires David to 
write many hymns and prayers and songs of praise ; gives unto 
Solomon such wisdom as man never had : two or three billions 
of people have died and gone to Hell while he was holding 
frequent communion with David and Solomon ; they will follow 
soon ; he loves them well enough to work constant miracles 
for them— but not a single word about that Hell of endless 
torment to which they all are doomed, or the means of escape. 
Three more centuries roll by, and the great prophets, like 
Amos and Isaiah and Micah, have spoken their word as Jahveh 
commanded them ; the noblest parts of the Old Testament are 
written ; everything that Jahveh wished to communicate to man- 
kind is written, exactly as he wished it: humanity is marching 
on to its doom ; three or four millions every year are tumbling 
from the brink of death into endless Hell ; Jahveh is doing all 
sorts of miraculous things every year to help his beloved along 
with their wars and their politics and their temple service — but 
not a word about the unending torment of the future, or the 
means of escape. Other centuries roll by ; the Old Testament 
is completed; inspiration ceases; Jahveh comes no more to 
speak with men; he has said all that he has to say to the He- 
brew people — which is nothing at all that other peoples did not 
know just as well without any revelation : death is mowing 
down his six or seven billions every century : the Devil gets 
everybody; Heaven is still empty; the ages of special provi- 
dence are past ; there is to be a long, long silence in which 
Jahveh will not visit the earth ; the miraculous revelation is 
now a closed book — but in it all not one single word, that any- 



132 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

body understood, about the universal doom or the means of 
escape. Theologians go back and imagine they find a few 
vague hints of these important matters, but the people to 
whom Jahveh spake did not observe any hint. He did not 
even succeed in arousing their curiosity about the future. The 
entire matter could have been explained to a child in one sen- 
tence ; but here is the Hebrew race, especially selected to re- 
ceive this miraculous revelation of Hell and the Atonement, 
and at the end of thirty-six or thirty-seven centuries of reve- 
lation they have not the faintest conception of it. They are 
even less interested in the existence beyond death than any 
other intelligent people on the face of the earth. 

I have used the word Jahveh, not the word God, for that re- 
lieves the feeling of blasphemy which would make me un- 
comfortable even in reciting a repudiated theory of such moral 
turpitude. That men could think of God as knowing such a 
doom and the means of escape, as perpetually speaking to his 
children about other matters and keeping silent about this, 
were enough to drive the whole world pell-mell into atheism. 
I feel that I am writing about a myth, such as Apollo or Athena, 
when I write of the Hebrew Jahveh. The name of God is 
unspeakably sacred as the life and love of the universe, the 
Infinite Father of the human race. I no more identify him 
with the Jahveh of the Hebrews than with the Jupiter of the 
Romans. 



77ze "Miraculous Prophecy" Theory. 

When it was believed that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, 
speaking about the kings of Israel several centuries before 
there were any kings of Israel ; when it was supposed that 
Isaiah wrote the last twenty-seven chapters of the book which 
bears his name, speaking of the remnant that should return 
from captivity two hundred years later ; when it was reckoned 
that Daniel himself was the author of the book of Daniel, de- 
scribing kingdoms and wars four centuries in advance — then 
of course, people thought the Hebrew writers were gifted with 
supernatural vision, with a miraculous power of gazing into 
the coming years and ages. Higher Criticism has shown that 



INCIDENTAL RESULTS. 153 

in all these great instances the writings were produced after 
the events. If there are any minor instances of like nature, a 
more careful study will probably show the same result. There 
is no proof that Hebrews could see into the future any further 
or more clearly than other people. There is vast assumption 
both by themselves and by Christians on that point, but no 
proof. The so-called prophesies of Christ in the Old Testament 
are the gratuitous interpretations of Christian theorists. Jews 
never did and do not now understand them so. All those say- 
ings which are twisted into descriptions of his person and life, 
plainly refer to other matters. Those which have been made 
to apply to his gospel or church, refer simply to the ideal Jew- 
ish kingdom, the purified and perfected nation and religion, 
which Jews dreamed for themselves, just as Greeks and Ro- 
mans and French and English and Germans and Americans 
and Catholics and Methodists and Unitarians, and all other 
people, dream and appeal to the ideal time when their nation 
or church shall be purified and powerful as they would like to 
see it. Such a dream, such a picture of idealism, in any litera- 
ture, can be applied, with a little pressure, to any great moral 
reformation or any great religious character. All that the 
Jews hoped and dreamed for their Jewish religion, Christian 
theorists have claimed as prophecy of the Christian religion. 
The spirit of assumption is not wanting in that claim. Moham- 
medans could apply the same prophetic dreams to Moham- 
med, Buddhists could apply them to Buddha, with equal 
justice. 



The u Miraculous History' Theory. 

If Dante needed no help of miracles to write the Inferno, 
why should it be supposed that the authors of the Hebrew 
psalms needed any miraculous help? If Gibbon needed no 
miracles to assist him with the Decline and Fall, why should 
the authors of the Pentateuch need any ? If Plato and Shakes- 
peare got along without special Divine aid, why could not 
Isaiah and Micah? If no supernatural inspiration was required 
for the production of Faust, why should any be required for 
the production of such books as Ruth and Job? In like 



164 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

manner ; if the Pilgrim Fathers came over here from Holland 
and founded a Republic in the American wilderness without 
miraculous aid, why couldn't a band of Hebrews travel from 
Egypt up to Canaan and establish themselves among the 
Canaanites without miraculous aid? If Cortes needed no 
miracles to help him conquer Mexico, and Alexander needed 
no miracles to help him conquer the entire world, why should 
David need miracles to help him conquer the barbarian hordes 
about Palestine? If the Egyptian monarchy could endure 
nearly five thousand years without any Divine assistance, why 
couldn't the Hebrew monarchy endure five hundred years 
without Divine assistance ? If Brahmins and Buddhists and 
Confucians and Parsees and Catholics and Protestants could 
found their own churches and make their own theologies and 
build their own temples and conduct their own worship with- 
out miraculous aid, why couldn't the Hebrews do the same ? 
How does it come that unaided men could build up such a 
marvelous organization as the Roman Empire, while it required 
the constant intervention of superhuman power to keep the 
little Jewish organism from extinction ? 

But it is said that Jewish history records these countless 
miracles ; so does Catholic history; so does Greek and Roman 
history; but we do not grant their miracles; we can under- 
stand their history, we can see the forces and account for all 
the facts, with the miracles eliminated. Hebrew history is just 
as easily accounted for without miracles. 



The New Appreciation of the Bible. 

Let us clearly understand that Hebrew Literature was not 
written for the world ; that it is Jewish history and tradition 
which the Jews wrote for themselves, with no more idea that 
it would be used by other nations as a religious text-book than 
Bancroft and Whittierhad that their history and poetry would 
be so used, two thousand years hence, by some nation yet 
unborn. Let us clearly understand that whatever genius there 
is in the Old Testament was simply the genius of the Hebrew 
people. The people, not their writings, are deserving of praise, 
as if these writings had something which the people had not. 



INCIDENTAL RESULTS. 155 

The Hebrews were not a people of specially great ideas. Their 
science was exceedingly crude, even for their day; their his- 
tories are blundering, even as histories went in that old time ; 
their poetry is to the poetry of Greece and Rome about what 
Whittier is to Shakespeare; their philosophy is lame and halt 
and broken and patched ; their theology does not indicate any 
wide intellectual grasp. One thing in the Hebrew people was 
remarkably great — their moral conviction. They were a people 
of moral conviction, as the Greeks were a people of artistic 
sense and as the Romans were a people of conquering and 
organizing genius. Their theories of what was right and what 
was wrong, of how things are right or wrong, were often very 
primitive, but their deathless love of right, put into their liter- 
ature, illustrated by their traditions and legends and myths 
and histories and biographies and novels and poems and rites 
and ceremonies of four thousand years —that is what made 
their literature so great. That sublime sense of righteousness, 
embodied in almost everything they wrote, is what has kept 
the Bible alive and made it the world's text-book of ethics and 
devotion. 

From the story of Eden to the Sermon on the Mount, the 
almost constant theme of Hebrew penmen is righteousness. 
Other nations had moral precepts as great and fine — the result 
of a few grand moralists — but no other people were so alive to 
the sense of morality. Hebrews looked upon morality as the 
greatest thing in the universe — the thing for the sake of which 
the universe was managed. All their theories of history, of 
nature, of God, were subservient to and moulded by this su- 
preme conviction of righteousness. Their very mistakes in 
history and science and theology accord with this conviction, 
for they conceived that all providence was a daily or yearly re- 
warding of the good and punishing of the evil, and their con- 
ceptions of what were good and evil were often erroneous. 

If you begin with the Book of Genesis you will find that 
everything is accounted for on moral grounds. The whole 
human race became sinful because the first man was dis- 
obedient. Suffering and death entered the world as divine . 
punishments of guilt. When this old writer looked about him, 
he saw what all men saw in his day ; that woman was the chief 



166 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

sufferer in the world, that she was generally the" slave of man ; 
and he accounted for that sad fact on the supposition that Eve 
had been more guilty than Adam. When he looked out upon 
the poverty and wretchedness of the world, the toiling for 
bread, the sweating brows of the multitude, he considered it 
God's retribution for the sins of our first parents. Death itself, 
to his thought the supreme calamity of the universe, was also 
a retribution. All these things were sent as the punishments 
for sin. They never would have been had man not sinned. 
We have other theories now to account for these, but we must 
not forget the profound moral conviction, the lofty belief in 
God's moral government, which inspired the Bible writer. The 
evils in the material world itself — how are they to be accounted 
for? To what are the briars and thistles and poisons and pes- 
tilences and earthquakes and cyclones due? The old Bible- 
writer made his God say to the sinful man : " For thy sake the 
earth is cursed." Geology teaches us a different lesson. These 
things were present in the earth before man appeared. The 
Bible writer was not a scientist, but we may profoundly respect 
that moral sense of his by which he saw the whole creation 
governed with reference to man's moral condition. 

If we enlarge our view sufficiently we may explain all things 
on the Bible-writer's principle — not on his theories, but on his 
principle. For one, I do not believe that man was an accident 
in an accidental world. Carry back the geological history of 
the earth as many millions or billions of ages as you please, I 
still believe that this earth to-day is exactly the kind of an 
earth God meant it to be, for exactly the kind of a human race 
that is now upon it. I believe it is the best possible world for 
this human race. A more perfect earth, in which there were 
no poisons and heats and frosts and sickness, might do better 
for a race of sinless beings ; but this earth rebukes laziness, re- 
quires toil, compels study, rewards knowledge, blesses the man 
who keeps the laws of life, inspires all progress and punishes 
all disobedience. When we look at it in the light of ages and 
millenniums, we shall have a different theory from his, but we 
shall understand these things only by applying the principle of 
that old Bible-writer — the universe is managed in the interest 
of morality. 



INCIDENTAL RESULTS. 157 

We look at general laws and can only make general state- 
ments. We do not see a special purpose in each separate 
event, as he did. He accounted for the flood on moral grounds. 
The human race was washed away because men became very 
wicked. In all Semitic races there was the old tradition of a 
flood. I suppose it was the lingering memory of the real geo- 
logical floods of the glacier epoch. Geology shows that those 
floods were terrible in that part of Asia inhabited by the Se- 
mitic races. We think of it as an event in the evolution of the 
earth. The author of Genesis made it a direct punishment of 
human sin. 

It is entirely possible that in some ancient time there was 
a sinking of the Dead sea country. In that calamity some 
ancient villages may have been engulfed. The old tradition is 
worked into the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Not being a 
scientist, not knowing anything about geology or natural law, 
the Bible-writer gave a moral explanation. It was the punish- 
ment of vice, and the story does not fail — Bible stories never 
do fail— to reward all the virtue there was. 

The story of the shortening of human life, from almost a thou- 
sand years to three score and ten, is a graphic presentation 
of the well-known fact that vice drives people to an early 
grave, and that purity lengthens the term of life. The longer 
we study the social problem, also, the more truth we see in the 
principle that the human race suffers for the crime of its first 
parents. Of course all human suffering is not due to crime, 
even in the most general statement; but the crimes of repre- 
sentative men, men at the centres of power, do entail a vast 
amount of grief on humanity. Think of the suffering that 
came to America from the early importation of slaves ! Think 
of the suffering that cursed Europe from the tyranny of kings 
and popes ! Think of the sufferings of workingmen and sew- 
ing women from the inordinate greed of men already rich ! 
Think of the horrors of a war that is produced by a few great 
politicians ! 

Whatever else they failed of having, these Bible-writers had 
the eternal secret of life and providence — the conviction that 
God created the world and humanity for the sake of righteous- 
ness — that evil must always and everywhere work destruction 



158 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

and misery — that virtue has the pledge of the Infinite himself 
for its rewards. That is the faith which made the Bible, and 
that is the faith which has produced all the virtues of human 
history. A book through which that faith breathes and pulses 
cannot lose its sacred hold on the hearts of men, however 
theories change. Follow the Bible right, through and you will 
find that evil is always punished and virtue always rewarded, 
(always excepting the books of Esther and Ecclesiastes.) Abra- 
ham is faithful, and the desire of his heart is rewarded by 
the miraculous birth of a son. Jacob lies to his father, and 
then he suffers the deceptions of Laban. He becomes true, 
and God abundantly blesses him. Joseph's virtue is lifted on 
high and becomes the saving power of his people. After all 
the great deeds of Moses and all his Divine rewards, he is not 
suffered to enter the promised land because he once proved 
faithless to Jehovah. Sampson lost his power by dallying with 
vice. David's cruelty was brought home to him in the death 
of Absalom, and his meanest act ended in his bitterest grief. 
Solomon, blessed above all men for his love of wisdom and his 
obedient spirit, lost the glory of his kingdom through unright- 
eousness. Read the stories as they are, from the author's 
standpoint ; you may not agree always with his ideas of what 
goodness is or what punishment is, but you will find that he 
always rewards goodness and punishes crime. In that noble 
sense the Bible is " a book of moral winnowedness." 

In the firm belief of the historians and the prophets, every 
king failed who was bad, and every good king succeeded. When 
the nation was righteous God gave it prosperity, but its un- 
righteousness was visited by calamity. In the conviction of 
those writers morality was the centre and soul of everything. 
God looked only at the heart. All the blessings of heaven 
were pledged to the virtuous. They believed that all the ele- 
ments of nature were so directly and miraculously controlled as 
to reward and punish men. Rich harvests, plentiful vines, 
timely rains and fair winds were given to the good. Blight, 
mildew, disease, frost, drought and flood were visited upon the 
bad. 

That childlike faith, so full of danger to all faith, was a sweet 
and happy comfort to them. It was such a simple and heart- 



INCIDENTAL RESULTS. 189 

felt dependence on the good God who loved nothing else as He 
loved goodness in His children ! Of course the material aspects 
of that simple faith must be given up. They could not help 
seeing that some bad men were fortunate, that some good men 
were great sufferers, that some wicked nations were strong, 
that their own faithfulness did not prevent their own national 
weakness and obscurity. 

They changed their theories of suffering and reward, but 
they did not give up the principle. They began to say that God 
made good people suffer that He might make them still better, 
might purify them and make them perfect through sufferings. 
That was one of the grandest things ever said of Jesus — that 
*.' He was made perfect through suffering." The apostle prays 
that he may have the fellowship of Christ's suffering that he 
may also be glorified with him. 

After the Babylonian captivity, the rewards of righteousness 
are no longer considered outward and material but inward and 
spiritual. God will make the faithful Jews the religious teach- 
ers of the world ; by their griefs they shall touch and purify 
the hearts of all nations ; their tears and sorrows shall wash 
away, as in a flood of love, the sins of the whole world ; they 
shall become " beautified within ;" heathen peoples will flock to 
Jerusalem and worship the true God, drawn thither by the 
sanctities of Jewish life and conduct ; brotherhood and kind- 
ness will destroy cruelty as the sun drives away the night ; by 
the power of brotherhood, war shall cease ; the lion and the 
tiger shall become gentle and a little child shall lead them — 
that is the noblest expression of moral Utopia ever uttered — 
innocence shall conquer power — love shall quench barbarism. 
To be good, to do good, to make the whole world happy, even 
in its sufferings, by purifying the souls of men — that was the 
new dream of the reward of righteousness which filled their 
minds after the captivity. 

The theory had changed, but the Bible principle remained 
the same. Morality was everything. God's providence was all 
for the virtuous. In that great sense the Bible is one book. 
The same grand faith in the good outcome of morals, the same 
conviction of the misery to follow wrong-doing, runs all through 
it, is the basis and the inspiration and the crowning glory of it. 



160 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

When we come into the New Testament the scene changes 
again-r-changes from earth to heaven. The punishments and 
the rewards are new, are celestial, are to come beyond death ; 
but the spirit of the Bible remains the same. Heaven is for the 
good. Hell is for the bad. The pure in heart shall see God. 
Those who visit the sick and feed the hungry and clothe the 
naked and soothe the prisoner and comfort the fatherless, shall 
be received at God's right hand. The good, who come up from 
all nations of the earth, shall be given a happy welcome. The 
children of the kingdom, if they be not righteous, shall be 
rejected. Whosoever gives a cup of cold water or shows him- 
self a brother to the "least," will be accepted of Him. The 
Publican who repents, the Samaritan who is kind, the Roman 
whose heart is right, the Syrian who loves virtue, the reformed 
outcast, the heart-stricken thief, are the chief examples of New 
Testament salvation. God's blessing rushes out to meet the 
returning prodigal. A pure purpose opens the fountains of 
Divine reward. The constant refrain of the Gospel, like the 
melody of " Home, Sweet Home " running through a sym- 
phony, is : " Be merciful, be unselfish, be kind, be pure, and 
great is your reward in heaven." The liar and the tyrant and 
the hypocrite and the selfish and the hard-hearted shall be 
cast into outer darkness. Another new theory of rewards and 
punishments we have in the Gospel, but it is the same Old- 
Testament faith that the destiny of man is fixed by his moral 
quality. 

The Old Testament laid stress on actions, assuming that if 
conduct is right the heart is right. The New Testament puts 
emphasis on motives, assuming that if the heart be pure the 
conduct will be pure. Jesus had no invention of government 
or church to filter the waters of conduct ; he would purify the 
fountain of sentiments. It was his direct belief that " a good 
tree cannot bear evil fruit." He carried this principle of inward 
purity to the pitch of absolute idealism. " Be ye perfect even 
as your Father in heaven is perfect." If men complain that 
such idealism is impractical, Jesus would answer them as John 
Ruskin answered the English architects when he demanded 
certain changes in the interest of their art, and they cried out 
" Impossible ! " " Oh," said he, " it is not the impossibility 



INCIDENTAL RESULTS. 161 

of it that I am talking about but the indispensability of it." 
Jesus never considered "practical" questions. To His divine 
enthusiasm the ideal was indispensable. Moral perfection was 
God's eternal purpose. It was for that the earth and humanity- 
were created. It was for that the life of this world and the 
world to come were granted. That was the task to which the 
Eternal Father set himself. That was the meaning and pur- 
pose of providence. That is God's reason for everything He 
does, God's reason for everything that man suffers, the goal 
toward which all creation moves, the consummation of the 
events of time — moral perfection. 

That, as I am able to read it, is the very soul of Bible teach- 
ing. That is what makes the Bible the religious classic of all 
ages. That demand for perfectness places the teaching of 
Scripture at the summit of life. We may fall below it, far be- 
low it in our schemes for the " practical," and we may rise 
again in our enthusiasm toward it; but human thought and 
feeling can never rise above it. 

This moral teaching of Christ, which was a natural devel- 
opment along the same line of the moral teaching in Genesis, 
must stand while the world stands as the final and complete 
word of life. 

Everything in religion draws life from that doctrine of moral 
perfectness. It determines our thought of humanity — what an 
exalted nature man must have, what divine abilities, when such 
demand can be made of him ! It determines our thought of 
God — how glorious, how patient, how full of love must be his 
nature, to set this ideal as the end of his work ! It determines 
our thought of the future — what an infinite meaning there is 
in the life beyond death, if that life also is for the sake of 
completing God's purpose ! How far we are below perfection 
in this world ! What ignorance and sin are yet in the souls of 
men when they die ! What a grand thought, that rewards and 
punishments, teaching and experience, are to be continued 
until the Gospel demand is fulfilled ! What an overwhelming 
idea, that God's word, " Be ye perfect," shall be held aloft as 
the command of eternity until it is obeyed and every soul shall 
come into the spirit of it ! 

That is my conception of the Bible. Its mistakes are mis- 
21 



162 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

takes of theory, as when the prophets taught that morality 
would avert earthquakes and mildew ; but the central principle 
of it, ceaselessly insisted on from Genesis to Gospel, amid all 
changes of theory, is this highest truth that ever entered the 
mind of man — this truth, that the purpose of creation was 
righteousness ; that the life of man, and the fashioning of the 
whole material universe,' and God's action from eternity to 
eternity ; that everything on earth and in the heavens, material 
and spiritual, past and present and future, was and is and shall 
be for the sake of morals. A book with that sublime convic- 
tion at the heart of it, had it a thousand mistakes of scientific 
theory and historic event and theological speculation, must yet 
be the book of books. 



Revelation. 

"I think Thy thoughts after Thee." Such is the reve- 
lation of God's wisdom to man. Divine intelligence is 
revealed to human intelligence, manifests itself in human 
intelligence. The facts and forces and laws and purposes 
of the universe are recognized by the man of scientific 
genius. These things are never told ; men discover, through 
their own study and development and culture, the plans of God 
in matter and life. How the Almighty conceived and realized 
a solar system, how He arranged for and brought to pass the 
kingdoms of vegetable and animal and human existence, by 
what devices He calculated and has compelled the growth of 
civilization — the revelation of it all comes to man's intelligence. 
Intelligence can only be revealed to intelligence. The revela- 
tion grows and brightens in the exact ratio of human ability 
and the exercise of thought. 

It must be precisely so concerning the moral nature, the 
feelings and purposes, of God. Divine emotion is revealed to 
human emotion, manifests itself in human emotion. The 
justice and pity and love of God are recognized by the man of 
moral genius. These things are never told ; men discover, 
through their own moral developments and culture, the plans 
of God in humanity and for eternity. What is the ethical 
meaning of our existence ; how we can fulfill our destiny and 



INCIDENTAL RESULTS. 163 

his purpose ; what is right and brotherly; what salvation is and 
is to be ; the entire plan of a soul, with its possible excellencies — 
the revelation of it all comes to man's moral nature, as that 
nature is developed and refined. Morality can only be revealed 
to morality. Righteousness and love can only be revealed to 
righteousness and love. The moral sense of man is a mirror, 
more or less perfect, in which the Divine nature and purposes 
are reflected. Man's moral sense, like his knowledge, is a 
growing thing. As we find it recorded in the Bible and in 
all other literature, in the laws and customs and manners of 
human society, the moral sense is always enlarging and refining. 
It is crude and feeble in all primitive races. In the early stages 
of its evolution it can reflect but a poor and distorted concep- 
tion of the Deity, as a half-polished and badly-soiled plate of 
metal can only reflect a dim and blurred outline of your own 
face. With every new development of the moral sense, it 
reflects the Divine character in clearer outlines and broader 
proportions. In an age when the moral sense is so feebly 
cultured that men see nothing wrong in slavery and polygamy 
and capital punishment for heresy, the popular conception of 
God will be very untrue, or but partially or inadequately true — 
like a child's notions of astronomy. Only the moral sense that 
has grown to something like perfection can truly represent God, 
as only the widest and most exact knowledge of the scientist 
can reveal the infinite facts of astronomy. 

It is impossible for men to think of God's morality except in 
the terms of their own moral experience. Men will never think 
of God as kind to his enemies (if it were possible for him to 
have any) until they have learned how to treat their enemies 
kindly. It will never occur to men that God's love is universal 
until they have developed at least the desire to put all vengeance 
out of their own hearts. The average moral sense of any age 
will determine the popular estimate of God. People never 
think of God as being any better than their own secret pur- 
poses. It is impossible that they should. An artist will see a 
thousand beauties in a landscape or a sunset to which the 
plodding farmer is blind. It requires an artistic soul to appre- 
ciate the Divine art. It requires a pure soul to appreciate the 
Divine purity. " Spiritual things are spiritually discerned." 



104 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

When you find such a morality as Jesus lived and taught, you 
may trust the conception of Deity which it reflects upon the 
world. The man who can put the golden rule into his daily 
feeling and conduct is able to comprehend somewhat worthily 
the eternal goodness. Whether that man lives in the first 
century or the nineteenth, in Christendom or heathendom, he 
is capable of teaching great truth about God's feelings and 
providence. His own character is a mirror that reflects with 
wonderful accuracy the character of his Maker. He is the only 
man whose word is to be relied on as anything like a complete 
or final revelation. 

This is the great principle of interpretation laid down by 
higher criticism. We must read every book and sentence of 
the Bible in the light of the age which produced it. If we find 
that God is represented unworthily, that words and actions are 
attributed to him which we now see would be wrong, we must 
simply remember that the moral standards of the nineteenth 
centur}' are higher than the moral standards of the ancient 
world. Many things that were once considered as virtues we 
have come to look upon as vices or failings. Every age 
attributes its highest sense of virtue to God. 

Such feelings as jealousy, egotism, vanity, self-love, which 
we condemn as unworthy of a noble character, were not 
anciently condemned. They were admired and delighted in as 
the proper feelings of the great. Selfishness and the spirit of 
tyranny belonged to a king, as his crown and sceptre. With- 
out them, with kindliness and modesty, a king of the olden 
time would have been despised as a weakling. The vanities, 
egotisms, mutual hatreds and deceitful schemings of the Greek 
gods were quite in keeping with what the Greeks admired in 
great men. It did not occur to John Calvin that he was dis- 
honoring God when he laid it down as the first principle of 
theology that God does everything for his own glory — thinks 
of nothing from eternity to eternity but his own glory. Calvin 
does not mean it as a dishonor when he tells us that God will 
eternally damn the great majority of his own children, just 
because it will show forth the glorious majesty of his power. 
Calvin's moral sense belonged to the dark ages. That was the 
sort of thing he admired in great men. That was the sort of 



INCIDENTAL RESULTS. 165 

thing he admired in himself when he plotted the death of his 
friend Servetus. 

The gods of all ancient nations, Hebrew included, have been 
represented as demanding worship. First and foremost in all 
the old religions is the god's demand that people shall fall 
abjectly before him, and humble themselves in the dust, and 
adore his power and beg his mercy. In every old religion the 
gods are represented as demanding the best and choicest of 
everything for themselves — the first fruits of the flock and the 
herd and the field and the vineyard — not because the gods had 
any use for these things — not that they needed anything to eat 
or drink — but that man should be constantly humiliated before 
them. To our moral sense there could be nothing more 
repulsive than such a demand, but it was not repulsive to the 
ancients — it was delightful to them. That wanton and haughty 
display of power was what they admired in their kings and 
princes. They thought the gods were actuated by the same 
personal ambitions and passions for glory which rankled in the 
breasts of great men. The entire system of sacrifices, the 
foundation of all ancient religions, is thus an expression of 
man's belief in the self-love of the gods. They must be 
coaxed and begged and richly rewarded before they would 
grant the slightest favor. That was kingly. A king's favor 
is a precious thing. It is not to be granted lightly. You 
shall be made to feel how great is the condescension when he 
stoops to bless a worm of the dust like you. That was the 
ancient idea of greatness in men or gods. It is a supreme 
relief when we can read these things in the Bible and under- 
stand that we are simply reading the history of man's prim- 
itive moral sense. Higher criticism has conferred no greater 
boon than to relieve our worship of these crudities. When 
the moral sense of the Hebrews became more highly and 
finely developed, these crudities were put away. The prophets 
tell us that God is weary of sacrifices, and that He demands 
truth and righteousness. Jesus declares that God is not like a 
jealous king, but like a good father who knows what we need 
before we ask him, and who accepts our kindness to the poor 
and the afflicted as love offered to himself. Indeed, if all of 
Jesus' teaching about God could be put into one word, that 



166 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

word would be self-forgetfulness. This idea alone makes wor- 
ship possible to a free intellect and a refined moral sense. A 
man of freedom and refinement cannot worship by command, 
any more than he can love on the threat of instant death. 
Love and worship will not be compelled, cannot be given to 
those who require them as their right. Worship will be full 
and free and beautiful, when we feel that God is infinite benev- 
olence, making no demand for himself ; just as love is unbound- 
ed to one who gives himself in kindly service and asks nothing 
in return. 

We have a proverb — a questionable proverb now — which says 
" The end justifies the means." To the ancient Hebrews it was 
not questionable — the end both justified and glorified the 
means. They held that it was not only excusable, it was right 
and a solemn duty to do wrong that good might come of it. 
They did not excuse Abraham's falsehood to Abimelech about 
Sarah ; they did not excuse Moses' falsehood to Pharaoh about 
going into the wilderness to sacrifice ; they did not excuse 
Jehu's treachery with the heathen priests ; they did not excuse 
Jael's assassination of a sleeping soldier or Esther's harlotry and 
bloodthirstiness in her dealing with Xerxes— instead of excus- 
ing these deceptions and massacres as we would, if we could, 
on the ground of military necessity, they gloried in them as 
matters of principle, and taught their children that God was 
well pleased with such principles of conduct, just as we teach 
our children the opposite. They were not satisfied with com- 
plimenting their heroes for such conduct ; the Old Testament 
refers the inspiration of such conduct to their god. In the name 
of all that is honest and honorable under the heavens, why 
should we believe such Bible teaching when we know it is 
wrong ! 

It is well to clarify our moral sense on this question of right 
and wrong. Wrong is not made right even by a military 
necessity. When evil becomes necessary, as it sometimes does, 
let us be perfectly candid about it ; let us call it what it is, a 
necessary evil ; let us not call it right. Let us make that 
distinction clear and get all of the old traditional fog out of our 
moral sense. It is sometimes an evil necessity to kill men. It 
is never right. You who were soldiers did not kill men as a 



INCIDENTAL RESULTS. 167 

matter of principle. It was an evil necessity. When the 
thought of the world becomes perfectly clear on that point, 
morality will take a sudden and long stride forward. Religion 
will take a still longer stride forward. Men never attribute a 
military necessity to God. They attribute to God only what 
they recognize as a principle of morality. Not any necessary 
evil, but the eternal right, belongs to the Divine character. 
The Hebrews attributed all sorts of wickedness to God, because 
they did not understand the difference between a necessary evil 
and the eternal right. 

The Hebrews did not individualize crime as we do. They 
held an entire tribe or nation guilty for any offense that might 
be committed within its borders. Our American Indians had 
the same dullness of moral sense. If a white man of any 
village wronged an Indian, every man and woman and child of 
that village was held responsible. Shakespeare's Romeo and 
Juliet pictures the same moral stupidity of the feudal ages. 
Every Montague held every Capulet responsible for the offense 
committed by any Capulet. Hebrews had no conception of a 
war between armies, as we now have. With them it was a war 
between tribes or nations ; and the war was not ended until the 
tribe or the nation was exterminated. They had no more 
compunctions about killing women and children whom they 
had taken captive than modern Christians have about killing 
men in the heat of battle. Any modern government would 
censure a general for turning ten thousand prisoners loose to 
go back into the enemy's ranks the next day. Any govern- 
ment would censure a general for drawing off his army from a 
half-won field because he dreaded to kill more men. That is 
exactly the way the Hebrews felt when David neglected to 
massacre the women and children he had captured in battle. 
He should go on and complete the conquest — annihilate the 
accursed tribe. Women would till the ground while men 
fought. Boys would soon grow into soldiers. We make a 
moral distinction between warfare and massacre. Hebrews 
did not. Indians do not. Catholics did not, when they sang 
Te Deum over bt. Bartholomew. Just as the Christians of 
this age link the name of God with their national wars, 
and sing praises when they read that ten thousand of the 



168 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

enemy have been slaughtered, the Hebrews linked the name 
of God with any foulest massacre, and felt that they were 
honoring him when they made him the author of it. Because 
Hebrews were angry with David for not murdering the women 
and children, the Bible teaches that God was angry with him on 
the same ground. If we are not quite so barbarous as they were, 
let us give the character of God the benefit of our moral 
progress. 

Man's moral sense is his only revelation of God's character, 
and when that moral sense is dull the revelation will be distor- 
ted. It is a great relief to understand the case, to know where 
all our thoughts about the character of God come from — to 
know that there will be a perfect revelation when, and only 
when, the world shall grow into perfect morality. There is 
no other kind of revelation except this, which arises in the 
mind and the moral sense of man. The only authority in 
religious matters that any Bible-writer has, that any man can 
have, is the authority of knowledge and reason and of moral 
intuition and culture. God never speaks ; man grows into a 
larger and truer apprehension of him. All the immoralities of 
Hebrew thought and conviction are ascribed to their god. 
Later on, when some of these immoralities are recognized as 
such, we find them ascribed to their devil. With all their 
weaknesses, we must recognize that the Hebrews, when com- 
pared with other races, were a people of exalted moral sense. 
Above all others, they had a progressive moral sense. The 
pre-eminence of the Bible is its faithful record of this growing 
moral sense of the Hebrews— a moral sense which grew and 
refined until it put forth the Sermon on The Mount. 



Inspiration. 

We say that the beauties of nature inspire an artist, a poet, a 
lover. Ocean and mountains inspire even a plodding soul. 
The stars and the intricate facts of the microscope inspire the 
astronomer and the naturalist. The history of human struggles 
for liberty and the rights of man inspire us all with patriotism. 
Heroic devotion and self-denial inspire us to courage and 
unselfishness. What is it to be inspired of God ? Exactly 



INCIDENTAL RESULTS. 169 

these, and like things. God is in all and through all. Nature's 
beauty is his ; nature's grandeur is his ; man's goodness 
is his; the mother's love is his. His life is in all; by his 
life all is sustained. The soul lives by ceaseless contact with 
him. By whatsoever in nature or humanity we are lifted to 
higher life, it is the Divine quickening. The farmer digs a 
well and strikes a vein of living water ; it is surmised that 
there are electric currents in the upper air by which we could 
communicate with other continents without the bungling de- 
vice of an Atlantic cable ; the earth itself is so magnetized by 
the universal presence of some inexplicable force that the 
compass-needle is always drawn to the north: the Spirit is 
not less wonderful. Our spirits, in the deep and high and 
inmost regions, come into life-touch with the Eternal. Inspi- 
ration tells nothing; it exalts and illumines, comforts and 
strengthens. The desire to learn, the love of purity, the mood 
of prayer, put us into vital communion with the infinite, imma- 
nent Holiness and Peace. 



Providence, 

like inspiration, is God's immanent life and activity. A tree 
grows because God's life is in it. A planet develops from chaos 
because the Divine life is in it. There is human progress 
because God's laws and forces compel a ceaseless evolution of 
intelligence and virtue. The exhaustless earth is providence. 
Human needs and aspirations are providence. Circumstances 
are providence. When we get over the weakness of miracles, 
everything is providence. 



The Issue. 

Higher Criticism makes the fair and square issue with 
traditionalism. That issue cannot be stated too clearly. 
Evangelical theologians claim that the Bible is revelation. 
Higher criticism claims that man's moral sense is revelation. 
Now, of course, if the Bible and man's moral sense were in 
perfect agreement the theologians and the critics would have 
no practical differences. I say "practical differences," but I 
22 



170 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

say even that with much caution. If ever}'- command and 
teaching of the Bible were in perfect accord with the ideal 
morality of the golden rule, there would still be a vast philo- 
sophical difference between the theologians and the critics — a 
difference which might become practical. That primary dif- 
ference between the two sets of thinkers concerns the simple 
question of cause and effect. Was the Bible the cause and 
man's moral sense the effect, or was man's moral sense the 
cause and the Bible an effect ? Did the Bible produce He- 
brew religion, or did Hebrew religion produce the Bible? That 
would still be a very important question, even if the Bible and 
ideal morality were in perfect agreement. Of course it be- 
comes the vital question when there is developed the slightest 
difference between the Bible and moral sense. 

Higher Criticism teaches that the Bible is an effect; that it 
was produced by Hebrew religion ; that it was written by men, 
just as all other books have been ; that it is composed of the 
thoughts and feelings of the men who wrote it. 
" Out from the heart of nature rolled 
The burdens of the Bible old ; 
The litanies of nations came, 
Like the volcano's tongue of flame, 
Up from the burning core below, — 
The canticles of love and woe." 

Whatever there is in the Bible came out of the burning ex- 
perience, the surging thoughts and emotions of the Hebrew 
people. In whatever they were right it is right. 

Theologians claim that the Bible had some miraculous 
origin outside of and distinct from the experience of the He- 
brew people ; that its authors are not to be credited with its 
idealisms nor held responsible for its immoral teachings. They 
tell us that when the Bible and reason disagree, reason shall 
surrender; when the Bible and the facts of science are not in 
accord, the facts of science must be counted out ; when the Bible 
and the noblest emotions of the human heart come into con- 
flict, the heart must be discredited. Higher Criticism teaches 
exactly the opposite. It declares that when the Bible and rea- 
son, the Bible and science, the Bible and the cultured feelings 
of the heart, are at variance, reason and science and heart 
shall stand. When the Bible says there were one hundred 



INCIDENTAL RESULTS. Ill 

and forty-four thousand sheep and oxen slain as sacrifices, 
inside of eight days, at the dedication of Solomon's temple, 
reason denies it. When the Bible tells us that the shadow of 
the sun went backward on the dial, science denies it. When 
the Bible teaches that a Sabbath-breaker or a witch or a 
disobedient son shall be killed, our moral sense denies the teach- 
ing. When the Bible says that sick people will be cured by 
the prayers of the elders and by anointing them with oil — at 
any rate we would not trust the prescription for small-pox and 
cholera. When the Bible says that " believers " can handle 
scorpions and drink poison with impunity — well, there are cer- 
tainly no "believers " left. When the Bible says: "He that 
believeth and is baptized shall be saved, and he that believeth 
not shall be damned " — there were Darwin and Emerson and 
Lincoln and Lowell and Whittier, unbelievers and unbaptized, 
and we should enjoy beholding, as a mere natural curiosity, 
the preacher who would dare to face an intelligent audience 
and declare that these men are now in Hell. 

Let the statement be made just as plain as English words can 
make it. Higher Criticism does not test science and reason and 
moral feeling by the Bible ; it puts the Bible to the constant test 
of science and reason and moral feeling. Whatever these con- 
demn it sets aside as untrue. Whatever these confirm it accepts 
as divine. The truth which the Bible contains is infallible and 
inerrant — not because it is in the Bible, but because it is truth. 
The same truth is just as infallible and inerrant in the Koran 
or the Vedas or the Books of The Dead or Shakespeare or 
Browning or Walt Whitman. 

" Truth is divine, wherever found, 
On Christian or on heathen ground." 
The Bible is diviner than other books, in just so far as it has 
more truth than other books — divine in no other sense. 

The only way to determine what is true in moral teaching is 
the test of experience. The golden rule is glorified, not be- 
cause Jesus uttered it, but because it proves itself divine in 
every day experience. Jesus himself is not set on high because 
of any miraculous or superhuman quality, but because his 
moral and intellectual merits demand the world's reverential 
affection. Higher criticism agrees most heartily with conserv- 



172 RESULTS? OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

ative Presbyterianism that the great teachings of Jesus, as set 
forth in the Sermon on the Mount, are infallible and inerrant- 
Higher criticism bows at the altar with evangelicalism before 
the authority of every established principle of life, and it re- 
gards every moral and spiritual truth as having within it the 
sacredness of God's life and loving presence. 



The Tyranny of Texts. 

Concerning all those parts of the Bible which can be demon- 
strated as true and good, there is no disagreement. All of that 
is God's word. There is so much in the Bible which human 
experience has demonstrated to be true and good that no man 
need to fear this ancient treasury of religious life and moral 
purpose will ever be neglected. The Bible lives because it is 
worthy to live. It is the world's devout classic. That is the 
only reason why any book or painting or musical composition 
or form of architecture ever comes to be known as a classic. It 
has so much truth or beauty that the world will never be able 
to get along without it. 

Urging all of that as heartily as ever the orthodox churches 
urged it, the critics understand that there are errors, mistakes, 
wrong teaching, contradictions, in the Bible, and those things 
the critics will not accept as God's word. You recall the use 
that Matthew Arnold, in " Literature and Dogma," has made 
of the German word, aberglaube, " extra belief." Allow me to 
say that the com77ion belief of theologians and critics alike is 
belief in those moral principles which human experience has 
demonstrated. All together accept these as divine. Aberglaube 
will represent the " extra belief " of theologians in the divine- 
ness of the errors and mistakes of the Bible. Belief in the 
infallibility of Bible truth is the world's moral salvation. There 
is no other kind of salvation. Belief in the infallibility of 
aberglaube has filled these eighteen centuries of Christian 
history with hatred and persecution and war. Aberglaube has 
been the supreme enemy of knowledge and political liberty. 
Infallibility for those things which do not accord with reason 
and moral sense — that has been the tyranny of the ages. It 



INCIDENTALr-BESULTS. 178 

was that which destroyed the magnificent literatures and the 
classic arts of Greece and Rome. You remember the saying 
attributed to Omer when one of his generals captured Alexan- 
dria, and asked what should be done with the great library. 
"Burn it," replied Omer; "for if the books accord with the 
Koran they are unnecessary ; and if they are contrary to the 
Koran they are pernicious." Everybody knows that the first 
part of the reply was hypocritical. Men do not destroy the 
treasures of literature because they accord with what is 
believed. All such treasures are the more ardently treasured. 
Omer had a deep suspicion, or a clear conviction, that the 
Alexandrian library would not accord with the aberglaube of 
the Koran. Mohammedans had learned from Christians how 
to fortify their Scriptural mistakes with the doctrine of infalli- 
bility. The Christian church was thoroughly convinced that 
science would not agree with the Biblical aberglaube, and that 
is why Galileo and Bruno were persecuted ; that is why Coper- 
nicus delayed the publication of his treatise on astronomy more 
than thirty years — he wanted to live ; that is why Darwin and 
Huxley and Spencer have been so bitterly assailed. The 
church is perfectly aware that higher criticism is not in har- 
mony with aberglaube, and that is why the church denounces 
the great modern scholars. The reason why criticism is always 
replied to with personal abuse is perfectly plain — there is no 
other way of replying to it. 



The Ground of Hatred and Persecution. 

Aberglaube means not only the doctrine of infallibility for 
Biblical mistakes, but the doctrine of infallibility for all those 
conflicting and extraordinary texts of the Bible which lie 
outside the regions of demonstration. It is this particular 
aberglaube which has created the ceaseless commotions inside 
of Christendom itself. The churches all together hate critics 
from the standpoint of infallibility for immoral and unscientific 
and unreasonable texts. The churches hate each other from 
the standpoint of infallibility for those doctrinal texts which 
contradict each other, and whose truth or falsity on either side 
can never be demonstrated. 



174 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

Just think of the hatreds between the Protestant churches 
and the Catholic church ; the full hundred years of battle and 
the shedding of millions of human lives. One of the theolog- 
ical reasons for that conflict — and all the other theological 
reasons were like it — was a dispute as to whether the flesh and 
blood of Christ were present in the communion wafer. Was 
there a constant miracle by which the unseen and intangible 
essence of the Master's body always graced the sacred elements ? 
By the confession of both parties it was forever impossible to 
decide whether or not that secret miracle had been wrought. 
Here was a text that seemed to favor it ; there was a text that 
seemed to deny it ; and such was their belief in the infallibility 
of texts that countless millions of men were ready to die for 
their side of a problem which they all knew could never be 
solved. 

Look at the conflicts of the Calvinistic and Arminian 
churches, which kept the social life of Germany and England 
and America in a very bedlam of quarreling and vengeance for 
two more centuries. Higher criticism is not hated by anybody 
to-day as bitterly as Methodists and Presbyterians hated each 
other two or three generations ago. Their quarrel became a 
sort of hereditary feud in every village and neighborhood, and 
the very children were taught to despise each other. What 
was it all about ? Here are some Bible texts that teach man's 
free agency. There are other texts that teach foreordination. 
Arminians hated as if they were doomed to it, and Calvinists 
hated with what looked like the freest and most deliberate 
purpose of their own. Of course, nobody could tell, or ever 
can tell, whether the laws of life are such that every human 
action is the scientific effect of a series of causes which run 
backward to infinity. Bible writers differed on that subject, 
just as writers do to-day; but our fathers believed the infalli- 
bility of texts, and each party planted itself on those texts that 
favored its side of the problem, and closed eyes to all texts on 
the other side, and they hurled the Bible at each other and 
kept on hating. 

The Baptist churches waged a long and bitter fight with the 
other evangelical churches for the same kind of a reason. Here 
were texts that favored immersion. There were texts that 



INCIDENTAL RESULTS. 178 

favored sprinkling. There was no possible means of deciding 
whether one form of baptism was more pleasing to God than 
the other. Both parties believed in the infallibility of the 
texts which favored their belief, and they kept on fighting until 
the common sense of the world was disgusted and they were 
shamed into silence. 

The Christian world and the Mohammedan world have been 
at war a great portion of the time for twelve centuries. The 
foundation of that war was the doctrine of the Trinity. Of 
course it is impossible for human beings ever to know whether 
God exists as Trinity or Unity. The earlier parts of the Old 
Testament teach polytheism. The later parts teach that there 
is one God. The New Testament almost constantly teaches 
the one divine person. There are a few texts which may be 
made to mean Trinity. Every scholar knows that the Christian 
church received its doctrine of Trinity from the Greeks. On 
the infallibility of those few texts which may be twisted into 
Trinitarianism and which contradict hundreds of other texts, 
the Christian world has waged twelve centuries of war, destroyed 
billions of human lives, wrecked the property of nation after 
nation, kept humanity for a full thousand years in a state of 
barbarism. 

For sixteen centuries or more the Jews were hated and per- 
secuted with a spirit of vengeance never exceeded by savage 
tribes. Why ? Because they, like the Mohammedans, would 
not give up their grand old belief in the unity of God, as the 
Christian did, and accept the Greek speculation of Trinity. 

For seventy-five years the Evangelicals and the Universalists 
of America waged a bitter warfare, in which personal misrep- 
resentation and slander played a most unseemly part, because 
there are texts which favor eternal damnation and other texts 
which favor the final holiness and happiness of all mankind. 
Each party claimed infallibility for the texts it loved and 
explained the opposite texts into thin air. 

You know that the moon always presents the same side to 
us ; we never see the other side, and never shall. A very 
thoughtful writer tells us that the moon is pear-shaped, and 
that the power of the earth's gravitation always holds the big 
end towards us. That reason seems reasonable, but until it 



176 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 

can be demonstrated let us not quarrel about it. When it is 
demonstrated of course we shall not quarrel about it. Suppose, 
however, that there should arise schools of theorists concerning 
the other side of the moon ; that one school should declare its 
surface to be a dead level, while another school declared that 
it had mountains ten miles high. Suppose that the " mountain" 
school should subdivide into several sects; one believing that 
those invisible mountains were composed of old red sandstone ; 
another believing them to be solid masses of blue limestone ; 
another claiming that they are built of Quincy granite. Sup- 
pose that all the people of Europe and America should divide 
on the question and join these various sects. Suppose that 
great social organizations should be constructed on the founda- 
tions of this and that belief. Suppose these organizations 
began to denounce and traduce each other as heretics, infidels, 
enemies of the true faith. Suppose they came to war on the 
subject, and should fight about it for the next three or four 
centuries, until all the civilizations we have built up in these 
modern times were destroyed, and the people of the twenty- 
third centry should find themselves again in the barbarism of 
the fourteenth century. What would the people of the twenty- 
fifth century — supposing them to have come to their senses — 
what would they think of such an issue ? About what the men 
of higher criticism think of the sectarian wars and hatreds of 
the past and the present. Four hundred years of war about 
the invisible things on the other side of the moon would have 
as much reason and as much religion in it as twelve centuries 
of war on the doctrine of Trinity, or two centuries of hatred on 
the question of whether man's free will was foreordained, or 
one century of vengeance on the problem of immersion. 



What Higher Criticism is Good For. 

It is good for the common sense and the peace and the 
prosperity and the brotherhood of mankind. It will destroy 
this foolish doctrine of infallibility for two texts which contra- 
dict each other. It will shame out of existence this supreme 
folly of going to war, or of hating your neighbor, on the 
strength of some speculative notion, the truth of which can 



INCIDENTAL RESULTS 177 

never be demonstrated. It will relegate to the limbo of eternal 
scorn the idea, or the fear, that God can be the author of any- 
teaching which is not morally perfect. It will finally establish 
the doctrine that man's cultivated moral sense is the true 
medium of revelation : and that will do away with sectarian 
hatreds. 

We can hardly imagine the moral progress and the happiness 
that would come to the world in the next hundred years, if 
the churches would cease to expend their energies in sectarian 
quarrels and trials for heresy, and should stand shoulder to 
shoulder in the work of helping their fellow-men. That con- 
summation, so devoutly to be wished, can never be brought 
about while churches cling to the infallibility of Bible texts 
which contradict each other, or contradict science, or contra- 
dict reason, or contradict the moral sense. 

Men do not quarrel about things that can be demonstrated. 
They make the demonstrations and abide by the results and 
call them divine. Moral principles have been demonstrated. 
Higher Criticism pleads with the world to accept them as God's 
principles. 

There would be no quarrel about things that cannot be 
demonstrated if men understood they were human and fallible 
speculations. There will always be different beliefs about what 
is unknowable. As long as men claim to have God's authority 
and command for their special theories about the unknowable, 
there will be hatred and persecution. When all such differ- 
ences are recognized as simple differences of theory, the good 
time of peace and religious brotherhood will come. 



23 



"PHASES OF RELIGIOiV IN AMERICA." 

By W. S. Crowe. 

" A particularly fresh and suggestive treatment of many of 
our most pressing religious problems. These lectures treat 
the following subjects : 

I. Puritanism, or the Religion of the Book. 
II. Methodism, or the Religion of Experience. 

III. Episcopalianism, or the Religion of Symbols. 

IV. Universalism, or the Book against the Book. 
V. Unitarianism, or Humanity against Tradition. 

VI. Theism, or the Revolt from the Materialistic Revolt. 
VII. Spiritualism, or the Religion of Demonstration. 
VITI. Ethical Culture, or the Religion of Agnosticism. 
IX. Reform within the Churches, or the Religion of Inter- 
pretation. 
X. The Concensus of Reason and Emotion, or the Religion 

of Eclecticism. 
XI. The Problem— Is God Good? 
XII. The Method,— How God works. 
XIII. The Hope. 

From the statement of these subjects the general scope of 
the book will be gathered. But the insight, keenness, and 
strength with which all the themes are treated, can be under- 
stood only by reading the book itself. If any one would know 
what is the trend of the most radical and at the same time the 
most reverent religious thought of our time, we do not know 
where he will find out better than from these fascinating lectures 
of Dr. Crowe." — The Unitarian. 

A busy business man writes : " Few theological books would 
keep me awake, but Phases of Religion in America robs me of 
sleep like a first-class novel or play." 



" We wish that we could quote more largely from this book. 
We have marked enough passages to fill a page of the Times; 
and they all sparkle with gems of thought, and with that pow- 
erful diction of which Dr. Crowe is a master. 

We are not sure that Dr. Crowe's platform will suit every 
one, but the new Christianity appeals to the rational interest 
of mankind and it will work a revolution in the old theology, 
if not an entire change."— Newark Daily Times. 

" There are many eloquent passages in each lecture. . . . 
The rhetoric is glittering, but never turgid ; earnest and fascin- 
ating, yet characterized by tranquil dignity. . . . The book 
is so temperate and kindly that, though men will differ with 
the author, they will close it without a feeling of animosity." — 
Newark Sunday Call. 

" It is a book that will awaken criticism, but that can safely 
court the criticism. The honesty of its purpose and the ability 
of its execution will be unquestioned. It will be profitable 
reading for those who agree and those who differ. Dr. Crowe's 
style is vigorous and direct ; the book will prove a thought 
generator. The purpose of this series of lectures is ' to state 
the main principles of religious thought and feeling in Amer- 
ica; denominations are introduced only as they are typical, 
leaving the author free to deal with those phases of the relig- 
ious problem which are not institutionalized.' In carrying out 
this purpose Dr. Crowe has given us an outline of denomina- 
tional positions that for clearness, frankness and fairness will 
be hard to excel. 

There is no more valuable part of the book than the two 
chapters on the 'Problem' and the 'Method.' It is doubtful 
if there ever has been written a better argument against athe- 
ism." — Philadelphia Corresponde7it of the Christian Leader. 

A ministerial friend writes : " I have gotten a year's preach- 
ing out of it." 

" Our new world is the Old World, its languages and litera- 
tures, governments and religions — carried over and repro- 
duced under new conditions. These were such as to make the 
time, in one sense, a possibly creative period ; and such it was 



and proved to be in modifications and adaptations to changed 
environments; but still, in the main, old ideas and forms, 
especially in religion, held their way ; each seed producing 
after its kind. 

It is in the clear perception and working out of this fact, and 
the wonderful and even dramatic power of its presentation, 
that the great value of Dr. Crowe's Phases of Religion in 
America is seen. It is not alone a history, but at the same 
time a philosophy of history, and it is only as history is thus 
read that its real and deeper meanings can be understood, and 
its educational, its teaching, power be realized. 

Phases of Religion in America is a proper companion to 
Dr. Herford's Story of Religion in England ; but the latter 
is not essential to the understanding of the former, for Dr. 
Crowe deals sufficiently with the sources to make plain their 
related results. His work is really a contribution to the history 
and literature of the religious thought and life of our country; 
not in the sense of new facts, for these are common ; but in 
their grouping and interpretation, and the wisely placed em- 
phasis of their essential contents and values. The conception, 
the style, the movement of the thought, is such that any 
thoughtful mind, reading the first lecture, will be carried on 
with increasing interest to the last ; and then wish that there 
were more." — Review of the book by H. W. Tho7nas, D.D., in 
To-Day. 

" Though brilliantly written and abounding in rhetorical cli- 
maxes and antitheses, which are in most hands eminently 
unfavorable to a candid presentation of facts, there is not a 
single palpable injustice, a single inflamed or over-wrought 
statement in the book. The writer's rare powers of humor, of 
satire, of sarcasm, are held in kindly leash, and thoroughly sub- 
ordinated to the promptings of a noble heart and the decisions 
of a crystal mind. One feels, as these glowing pages storm his 
heart and his intellect, that the author does indeed ' plead that 
truth of religion which over-arches all sects, and that spiritual 
experience which underlies them all.' 

The eleventh chapter (' The Problem — Is God Good ? ') is a 
powerful presentation of a difficult theme, and is itself worth 
ten times the price of the book. In connection with the twelfth 
chapter, (' The Method — How God Works ') it is an irrefrag- 



able reply to the pessimism of Schopenhauer and the shallow 
arraignments of Providence in the disjointed and phantasmal 
philosophy of Ingersoll. 

Phases of Religion in America shows ripeness of scholarship, 
fulnesss of reading, maturity of judgment, carefulness of prep- 
aration and complete mastery of the subjects treated. The 
writer has strong convictions of his own, but they are mellowed 
by a broad and generous catholicity of temperament and cul- 
ture, which enables him to take the position of the sect, party 
or movement he wishes to discuss." — From a review by Jos. H. 
Foy, LL.D., in Non- Sectarian. 

" We know of no other single book in which the reader will 
find so much latter-day information concerning Methodism, 
Episcopalianism, Universalism, Unitarianism, Theism, Spiritu- 
alism, Ethical Culture, and the general considerations that 
would gather around such a study." — Unity. 



Phases of Religion in America. 

BY W. S. CROWE, D.D. 

144 pages, Cloth, One Dollar. 

Address Rev. W. S. Crowe, Newark, N. 



